I strongly suspect DL is playing games.

One principle you need to keep in mind is that you will never be able to recover for your inconvenience. If you are losing money by not being at your destination, get on another carrier and just go and try to get DL to pay for it later. There's no guarantee they will, but I can guarantee you they won't compensate you because your vacation was 12 hours shorter, etc. etc.

It was canceled due to weather.

I flew ORD-LGA last night on AA and our flight was delayed due to weather, though not by very long. A friend's flight last night from MDW-LGA was also delayed for the same reason.

Though the skies were clear, we were bouncing all over the place when we got near NYC, and the pilots said that ATC had to significantly reduce the number of arrivals and departures at the NYC airports.

Plenty of times I've been in this situation, where weather is cited as the problem at the arrival city, but the skies are clear. It's possible, and it happened last night.

d

Well, this story just keeps getting better. Finally back in New York this afternoon, but you guessed it...... no luggage or golf clubs. They told us after locating them they would send them on a later flight. Just curious what ever happened to the new security system where no luggage can fly without it's owner on the same flight. It will be interesting to see what part of the country it ended up in. So much for security.

Airlines aren't required to do much for you for weather related problems.

The only gripe I think you can have here is that they lost/misrouted (we'll see which one) your luggage.

If you're not happy with the way they're handling your luggage situation, take your business elsewhere.

d

It sure would be nice if the airlines had to share their weather information publicly. Further, if it is unsafe for one airline to fly, then it should be that way for them all.

Someone tell me why there should not be a centralized weather posting for all airlines and PUBLIC to reference. It would stop the lying when they really do not want to fly an unprofitable flight.

IIRC, weather problems in a 3rd city (that are irrelevant to your itinerary) don't count as weather related delays for the sake of rule 240. After all, it's not your fault that the airline decided to get your MSP-EWR airplane from DEN.

You can see FAA weather delays here:

http://www.fly.faa.gov/flyFAA/index.html

At crowded airports, it doesn't take much weather to cause problems. Just a low cloud cieling will mean that aircraft spacing will have to be increased. This means flights will be delayed and/or cancelled. To a person on the ground, or to the tv weatherman, a low cloud cieling may not be noticed or mentioned. So just becuase your mother/wife/friend didn't see any problems with the weather, doesn't mean that the weather wasn't a problem.

just outta curiosity what would the compensation be like if it wasnt weather related?

For what was essentially a 1½ hour delay? How about an apology. A meal coupon might have been nice, I guess.

Tigertiger'
A 1 1/2 hour delay? Our flight was scheduled to leave Sunday evening at 8:10, We arrived in NY Monday afternoon at 1PM, with no luggage.

[This message has been edited by Always Travel Ready (edited 04-16-2002).]

A free hotel room (for an overnight delay such as this topic).

DL used to this quite often. They would fold an earlier flight into a later flight and so long seat assignments, etc. They would notify you by phone a few or a couple of days out, but you would often get a center seat on a packed flight. It's why I stopped flying them unless absolutely necessary.

Thats the disadvantage to flying on an airline that adds many flights to a market merely to outnumber the departures of their low fare competition to rid them of the market. When Delta can not fill the seats they needlessly placed in the market they simply cancel the flight.

There was an article in the Southwest magazine awhile back that addressed this perception. Their point was that cancelling a flight due to a light load also means that subsequent flights (some of which might be very full) will be cancelled as well, so it's not that simple. However, they did point out that flights are sometimes cancelled due to a mechanical problem or crew availability issues. In those cases, it would make sense to look at the flights departing within a certain time window, and divert the remaining equipment and crew to the fuller flights, and thus cancel the one with the lightest load. Thus, they inconvenience the fewest passengers, even though this can give rise to the perception that flights with light loads are often cancelled deliberately. This logic makes all the sense in the world to me, and I suspect that a similar thought process occurs at the other carriers as well.

Setting aside underhanded cancellation of flights because of load issues for a moment...

Am I alone in gratitude for pilots & airlines that don't fly until they think the weather or plane is safe enough to do so?

I've had my share of delays, but a year later they're forgotten. I would rather not find out what will happen if they choose to fly when chances of an accident or failure are higher.

JP