DL Operational Problems Spring 2023
 

Seems Delta's state of low grade meltdown continues this weekend. Yesterday I was at SLC and there were quite a few cancels to quite a few cities and a long line at the help desk. Weather was perfectly fine. 89 cancels across the system to end the day, significantly more than WN, UA or AA. Same story again today. Delta has already canceled 96 flights compared with 31 at United, 6 at American and 3 at Southwest. Also approaching 25% delayed today. Seems to be a weekend thing which suggest pilot staffing. The days of canceling cancelations are long gone.

There is weather in ATL both yesterday and today. ATL delays/cancellations can pretty easily cascade throughout system by causing equipment and staff to be out of place.

Both yesterday and today have been awful at ATL. Many cancellations and delays due to early am thunderstorms that cascade throughout the day. Long rebooking lines. And very little wiggle room in the system with excess capacity doesn’t allow for rebooking in a reasonable amount of time. Flights I saw from ATL to RDU Sat am resulted in rebookings to Sunday morning.

The weather looks fine in ATL. Might get a storm band later. DL is up to 144 cancellations and a third delayed. No weather waiver issued yesterday or today for anywhere Southeast or otherwise.

DL's wholly owned regional Endeavor which also has major ATL operations has only canceled 2 flights today and 2 yesterday.

There's more to the story than just weather.

Significant thunder and lightning in ATL both Sat and Sun early morning had a domino effect through both days.

And less of a domino effect on regionals...

There is no point in trying to push a conspiracy theory, storms decimated the 9/10am bank out of ATL and that will cascade through the system. Routing is all over the place trying to avoid storms, look at this ATL-Costa Rica flight that went north and west before heading back south to SJO. https://flightaware.com/live/flight/...355Z/KATL/MROC

It is also peak Florida season, and there is currently a ground delay program averaging 120 minutes on all flights entering the state from the north and west: https://nasstatus.faa.gov/

My ORD-ATL flight was delayed >3 hours due to the storms. The crew came from fort Walton and had a 4 hour groundstop there. Definitely not a conspiracy. In fact, I’m impressed they managed to not cancel ord flights and get the later flights back closer to the regular schedule.

This. Saturday morning at ATL started with a ~90 minute ground stop as I was about to board in BTR so anything originating or going through ATL yesterday was probably delayed at each stop. ATL had ~50% of its flights delayed yesterday.

oy. i've got LGA-ATL-XXX tomorrow and looks like another day of storms. Good luck with travels, everyone

I don’t know exactly what’s going on as information isn’t particularly forthcoming.

2 hr delay NY to MCO on Thursday and todays return canceled. :mad: Planned Inbound a/c from NY was a little late but they probably decided to use it elsewhere. Rebooked nearly 24h later, doesn’t work for me. Managed to book same-day on another airline, will see if DL reimburses me. They sent us all $15 food vouchers… :rolleyes:

Feels like deja vu from last spring. There was NOT a lot of leeway in the schedule to absorb delays. Oh right, all the operations planning people took early retirement in Covid.

I'm pretty sure there is weather in ATL every day. :D

Definitely pockets of bad storms today and yesterday in ATL.

Our ATL-DCA tonight was delayed then canceled, and we were told that the inbound pilot couldn't get in. No other ATL-DCA was canceled but they were all zeroed out, as were most of the nonstop flights tomorrow. Auto rebooked on a 0600 atl-lga-dca, but better for us to do tomorrow evening...confirmed into full fare Y without seat assignments. Fingers crossed

While ATL operations are significantly impacted, there was a line of severe storms between ATL and points west and south. Additionally, there has been significant flow control delays to /from Florida stations because so many Airways and routes were essentially shut by storms. Flights have also had unusual routings that added to flight times and cascading delays.

Ok but the largest two airlines in Florida - Southwest and American - have canceled 24 flights combined today. Delta's wholly-owned Atlanta focused regional has canceled 3. Delta mainline is 40% delayed and now approaching 200 cancellations.

I'm not saying there's a conspiracy. Rather Delta seems to be running on a very thin line these days. First it's a weather but then a cascading crew mess that takes time to recover from as we've seen with other airlines. Delta used to be the leader at IRROPS and I feel like American and United now beat them at their own game. We'll see how things go the next few days.