Shutdown issues affect IRL flights?
 

So we have a flight next week..... are the
'mechanical issues' affecting flights in real time? Will affected flights be notified? Should we be concerned?

Yes
At some point
How does being concerned help you

Yes. But to a smaller degree than one would be led to believe from the published reports.

For now at least.

I'm managing my concern by proactively looking at alternate flight availability, and checking my flight(s) status frequently (since my experience with Southwest flight notification services is questionable at best).

If your upcoming travel is imperative, I'd recommend you do the same.

In the last 3 weeks we have had 2 of 6 flights cancelled. Southwest is always good at rebooking or refunding. Note: our cancelled flights were both last flights of the day.

4 out of 10 of my last WN flights last two months have had maintenance delays. Lots of vouchers and missed meetings...

Agree that it's smart to be extra proactive and diligent with your flight plants if critical right now.

I am trying to understand how many are really impacted by the mechanical issues vs weather.

The media is of very little help.

They have about 4,000 daily flights. Recent media I saw indicted about 430 flights were cancelled one day this week, but 350 were weather related.

Looks like some 90% of flights are still operating. Over 95% without weather impact.

I wouldn't call 90% flight completion satisfactory. It would mean, among other things, that WN is cancelling a few hundred more flights a day than AA/DL/UA which regularly achieve 97-99.7% completion.

WN is showing A LOT of cancelled flights yesterday and today, but I think most of that has to due with the bad winter weather around the country and not mechanical issues.

1. Yes
2. No

Time for a little homework:

https://flightaware.com/live/cancelled

No other U.S. carrier is even remotely close to Southwest's current mess. Foreign carriers (at least in this case) do not matter.

ATL has been LIFR for going on 24 hours (in this case, dense fog). Albeit a bit slower, life goes on. Delta has had delays, but *ZERO* cancellations Tuesday or Wednesday. It's been snowing(!) for 12+ hours at LAS. Slows things down a bunch. Updates every minute Here. Research past history and individual issues Here. Remember you're looking at GMT times.

This one is 100% on The Mechanics' Union and The Company. Not busted airplanes, not poison peanuts, and not the NWS. The Mechanics' Union. And the Company.

Vegas is dominating on cancellations. I am wondering if with the snow this morning if WN made the call to just utilize LAS as a huge cancellation center and blame weather rather than mechanical...

Little worried because I am flying LAS > BUR tomorrow and may parents are flying BUF > LAS > BUR. We are on separate LAS > BUR flights, so hopefully we successfully arrive at our scheduled and/or around similar times...

We had a cancellation which affected our flight home this past Sunday. The first leg between DAL and LAS was cancelled (I don't know if it was mechanical, though). They did some sort of equipment swap at LAS. The aircraft went LAS-SJC and then SJC to SAN. We were about an hour and a half late departing for our (SAN-BWI) flight. But, lucky for us we had a pretty good tailwind and arrived at BWI in just under 4 hours making our flight only 39 mins late.

Surely not saying 90% is acceptable. Nor is the number of flights impacted by mechanical stuff okay.

Just pointing out that the media is making the mechanical out to be considerably worse than it is.

Saying 400+ flights are cancelled and not pointing out the full picture is just bad reporting.

A but cynical, no?

Should be obvious today's disruptions are skewed by LAS wx. McCarran has had 165 outbound cancellations.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...8be7a91313.jpg

Cancellations within, into, or out of the United States today: 765

I live in Vegas. We had snow yesterday along with low cloud ceilings, both of which are very unusual here.

It seems like a disproportionate number of the cancelled flights are in and out of LAS. There is a large trade show (80,000+ not including spouses) wrapping up today. That could mean a LOT of headaches tomorrow.