"Irregular operations" DL 478 as cause of flight delay?
 

Anyone ever heard this before? My husband is on DL 478 this evening, and it's badly delayed, which will no doubt cause him to spend the night on the floor of ATL after missing his connection. The Delta operator told me that it wasn't weather-related but rather "irregular operations." Is this a catchall? Does it mean a mechanical? Or something security related? :(

I believe irregular operations basically means the entire system is messed up. Could be weather disrupted ATL which would throw all flight schedules out of whack for the rest of the day - afternoon thunderstorms are great for this in the summer in ATL. Could be a computer failure like NW/Pinnacle had last week where everything was running hours behind. Aircraft are out of position, so they are trying to get things back to normal.

I had the same in ATL last fall. Was late getting out of HSV, trying to get to DTW. Every DL flight to anywhere in the eastern half of the country was late. Checked with gate agent to see if they could route me through CVG instead, but that had fewer backup options. Got to ATL about two hours late. There were several DTW flights on the ground, waiting for gates, switching gates, .... A complete mess. I now avoid ATL, especially in the summer.

I'm going to move this thread over to DL where you may find more information.
Obscure2k
DL & TravelBuzz moderator

All that Irr Ops means is that something is screwed up somewhere. It could be weather, it could be a mechanical on the plane you were supposed to fly on, it could be that your plane was swapped out to a different route because the other plane went mech, it could be ATC back-ups, it could be a computer glitch.

From the description that the OP has given there is no way to tell without access to internal DL data.

Cheers

I was flying CLE-ATL yesterday, due to arrive at 5:30. We were on-time, despite leaving 30 minutes late when the copilot told us ATL had been briefly closed due to windshear, and we were being diverted (I'm thinking c'mon BHM!). Instead we circled for 30 minutes and landed at ATL. I had a 3 hour CRC visit and saw a number of flights delayed on the boards, including mine. Over 3 hours, some miraculously recovered (mine did), some did not. It did not look like it was all that widespread and ATL couldn't have been closed long. I also saw a couple flights close early and shut their doors on late connecting pax. :mad:

Just to clearify. IROP is an industry term that means a flight is delayed for whatever reason. But if you looked at the national radar yesterday, it's not surprising.