WineCountryUA

Without getting too OMNI here, the 2% is misleading because it was not a flat across the board cut. Most effected agencies are actually in the 5% to 10% range of cut from planned budgets. More than the 2% which was of the entire budget federal budget with large areas {entitlement programs - such as Social Security} exempted.

Not sure what the effected agencies actual numbers were but 5%-10% will impact operations. But given some of the discretion and the fact that commerical passagner service is less that half of the controlled air operations, impact on UA / passagner travel will not be clear until we see what choices the agencies make.

flavorflav

Back on point: If the sequester's pain is as bad as advertised, a prudent outlook would be to treat every flying day like a day with a good chance of thunderstorms.

Travel early in the day -- a flight at 7 a.m. is less likely to be sacrificed at the traffic management altar than a flight at 5 p.m.

If you're flying into a smaller station like DSM that has limited service, consider padding your travel schedule by an extra few hours to accomodate a greater chance of irrops. If you need to be in DSM at noon Friday, consider leaving home at noon Thursday instead of 3 p.m. Thursday.

If you're making a connection and have a choice of connecting cities, consider choosing the city closest to your destination. For example, if you are flying MCO-DSM on UA you can connect at IAH, ORD or EWR. EWR-DSM is only 1x day and that flight is late in the day. ORD-DSM is 5x/day and only a six-hour drive if push comes to shove.

Even if you can fly direct, apply a strategic eye to your bookings. If EWR is your home airport and you're headed to DSM, there is a direct, nonstop flight. But as noted above it is 1x/day and late in the day. flightstats reports that the average delay for UA on that route is 83 minutes, and gives that route an 0 of 5 "very poor" rating. Even with a nonstop available, the EWR-based flyer might consider booking a connection early in the day through ORD as more reliable than the nonstop.

burnsy

Thanks FF. Good stuff!

BlueZebra

Agree totally. About half the Federal budget was exempted. And the cuts were for half the year. So, to use the faulty logic going around, its only 2.3% cuts of the entire Federal budget, but when enforced for the second half of the year it is essentially 4.5%. And when half the budget is exempted, that pushes it to 9% of the budget areas the cuts were actually applied to.

So WineCountry is right on with the numbers.

JSlo

Yep thats probably great advice flavorflav. Somehow we are going to get through this thing despite somehow the "cuts" hitting the FAA and the Blue Angels and White House tours(!)....wow really? I also got the same announcement at the gate in SFO on an international flight PEK-SFO, so it's definitely "happening"....it is an embarassment frankly...they came on in english and mandarin saying that although we are at the gate 7:40AM (30 minutes early), we will now wait onboard without deplaning due to the US government budget cuts the immigration lines don't open until 8AM, and so we are not allowed to deplane. Other than one or two run ins with "tourists behaving badly abroad", it was the first time I was embarrased for my country of birth. Shameful to try and impact in this way versus doing what every business and household has done for the past few years...cut expenses while still delivering the goods.

I agree, best case is to treat and do as flavorflav suggests. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

burnsy

New York sees delays due to ATC cuts, but are they fake?

Alpha Golf

10 times less than usual? There are a negative number of flights?

gooseman13

LAX right now is in a 3hour ground delay program due to "staffing."

LASUA1K

Instead of 12 rj's from ORD-IND, fly 5 mainline.

weirdlyndon

Got hit with the same reason for my DEN-SFO take off delay this morning. We pushed back on time and pilot came on to advise of our revised wheels up time (45 minutes later) and explained it was due to FAA staffing and the sequester.

Shareholder

At a less convenient schedule. Why not just fly one 777 or 747 a day each direction?

LilAbner

After the 2000 "Summer from Hell", this is gonna be a walk in the park!

l etoile

Addressing various statements:

-There are about 24,000 commercial airline flights a day. Having 6700 flights delayed is about 25% of flights. (For perspective, the worst day in 2013 had 2500 delays; the worst day in history had 5200 or so.)
-Air traffic controllers are being furloughed 8 hours per two-week pay period.
-Admin and managers are also being furloughed.
-The impact comes from what someone stated upthread w/r/t retirements and not being fully staffed at many facilities. Say 10 people are assigned to an area. One is furloughed, one's on guaranteed vacation (secondary vacation has been canceled), one calls in sick. Now you have seven people to operate eight positions with no one on break, so now you close sectors. That's a May scenario. Get to June and you have a couple of people on vacation and it gets worse.
- To mitigate impacts all training has been greatly curtailed so as people retire (and these are happening with great frequency) positions aren't being filled and hiring is frozen. Basically, impact may be minimal at first, but will snowball rapidly.

steved5480

For real time go here:
http://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/

For the current day (beginning @ 0000z) go here:
http://.www.fly.faa.gov/adv/advAdvisoryForm.jsp & click "show selected advisories"

cesco.g

Same crossed my mind. Remember: "Sandy came in handy".