Normally "bad weather" isn't massive thunderstorms over the airport that would threathen your physical safety. Usually it means high winds or winds in a bad direction or low clouds or T-storms en route, all of which primarily affect ATC, not safety.

IMHO, the FAA is too conservative when it comes to ATC flow control. It works out nicely when a plane sits on the ground instead of circling (fuel consumption), but often a plane could have gotten through anyway, or gotten through sooner than expected, and as a result everyone's time is wasted.

Only recently did the FAA allow flights to cruise at "low" altitudes (something like 20,000 feet) to avoid delays. The only disadvantage of flying low is the greater fuel burn. Safety is rarely an issue when it comes to "weather", although it makes for a good excuse that many people believe.

There is, it's called www.atc.gov (I forget the subpath since I don't fly much anymore) It has a US Map with the top 50 Airports on it, and you can get very current data on flight delays due to weather. it is also very specific about city-pairs. Ex: LGA-PIT may be singled out as a route for which there are delays on one or both ends.

This was so very helpful to me when I was 'sentenced' to a project outside of Chicago and rarely got home on the same day due to the mess at ORD. Sometimes I would see the delays before I left the job site so I would call US Chmn's desk. I often had more advance info than they did.

If you're really good at research, it helps when you can figure out which inbound flight makes your outbound and backtrack IT for delays, etc... Did that a lot when I was in and out of PIT weekly.

Hope this helps you. (I know it won't save you from the lying b**tards at DL, but having truthful information can make you feel a little better.)




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"You can never have too much Reverb."