Mrs. PTravel is currently at SFO, where she was supposed to take the 1:45 flight to SNA. She just called me and told me that the flight was delayed coming in and, because they don't think they can turn it around in time, they may cancel her flight. I'm unfamiliar with LCCs, so I'm not sure what to do in this situation:

1. I suggested that she tell the GA (and, if necessary, the supervisor), that she wanted to be protected on the next flight.

2. I assume Virgin America has no interline agreements with other carriers, so asking to be endorsed over is pointless.

3. This strikes me more as an IDB situation than a weather delay. The plane is here and ready to go, but Virgin America doesn't want to fly it because they have another flight on the route and they don't want to disrupt their schedule further -- instead, they'll just cancel that leg and keep the equipment in SFO for the later flight. To me, that's not the same as a weather delay (if in fact, that's why this flight was late coming in). This appears to be for the convenience of the airline.

Short of buying a walkup fare for Mrs. PTravel on another carrier, any suggestions?

Sounds more like an issue with crew timing out - maybe extended crew time due to delay? Is there WX in SFO?
It's definitely not an IDB situation if they cancel a flight though.

Any update on what happened?

Well, turns out they got out at 2 pm, so everything worked out. I don't think there's weather in SFO. There certainly isn't here in SNA. Probably the flight was coming in from somewhere else.

Sounds like a lot of aggravation over a 15 minute delay. Someone at VX seems to have overreacted.

I seem to have had poor experiences with their SFO-SNA route. For one reason or another, it's usually delayed by 15 minutes due to other flights arriving/departing late from SEA or LAX.