As awful as it is when a flight is canceled due to a storm, in some cases it can be even more frustrating when a flight doesn’t show canceled and it’s nearly impossible to figure if it will fly or not. While changing weather has created chaos all week, here are a few tips to help you make a more educated guess on the most important flight of all – yours.
1. Look at other airlines. Last night JetBlue insisted all their flights would depart today from JFK to San Francisco, while most airlines would cancel their flights. Not surprisingly, late last night Jet Blue followed suit and canceled their flights as well.
2. Look at your own airline’s flights. As noted above, if most airlines are canceling flights and a carrier claims they will fly all their planes, that’s not realistic. But if they are keeping just one or two planes scheduled then they usually have some expectation of getting them aloft. Delta and American today, for example, each had ONE flight make it from JFK to San Francisco.
3. How big a plane are you booked on? If an airline is canceling some percentage of their flights due to weather, they will try to fly the biggest planes to get the most people to their destinations. Also, commuter planes are more likely to have problems flying in iffy weather.
4. Where is the plane coming from? This may show up on the airline site or your travel agent may be able to tell you. If the plane is originating in a city that also has bad weather, that is one more thing that can go wrong.
5. What time of day is the flight? Most airlines try to get the first and last flights of the day out if possible. And the first flight of the day is first in line for deicing etc.
6. International priority. If you are flying to or from an international hub, airlines prioritize flights that make the international connections because that’s where they make their money. For examples – flights arriving into JFK on Delta in the late afternoon connect to their flights to Europe, flights flying from San Francisco in the early afternoon work for Asia connections.
None of these tips for cancellation prediction are 100 percent guaranteed. Sometimes an airline will go above and beyond to try to get a flight in the air, and it just doesn’t happen. But checking for these clues will at least decrease your chances of being stranded at the airport.
And perhaps it goes without saying, if you decide to chance it with a flight that you hope actually takes off, make a serious extra effort to get there early. Not only will the same weather that delays and cancels flights make road travel more difficult, but also the sheer number of stranded passengers already at the airport means that airlines will give away reservations as soon as the rules allow.
Janice Hough is a California-based travel agent a travel blogger and a part-time comedy writer. A frequent flier herself, she’s been doing battle with airlines, hotels, and other travel companies for over three decades. Besides writing for Travelers United, Janice has a humor blog at Leftcoastsportsbabe.com (Warning, the political and sports humor therein does not represent the views of anyone but herself.)
