Canceling vs Delaying?

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Intelligent-Wrap-309@reddit

My Paris-Rome flight was cancelled. Skycop handled everything and refunded me easily.

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Honestly, sometimes it feels like they just delay to avoid the "cancellation" stats. 🤔 I've been there, stuck for hours, and it's super frustrating. But whether it's 4 hours or totally axed, if it's their fault, Skycop can usually still get you paid. I used them once, and it actually worked out! 💪

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trying_to_adult_here@reddit

My company is obsessed with all the statistics the DOT tracks, but especially Completion Factor and Controllable Completion Factor. Cancels lower completion factor, so we hardly ever cancel. The company goal for controllable completion factor is something like 99.9%. We will run flights empty the next day rather than cancel them so our completion factor looks pretty. We do this regularly. It’s dumb. (Weather and ATC cancels aren’t considered “controllable”) Cancel vs delay decisions are made above the level of an individual dispatcher, especially for large-scale weather events. Yes, dispatchers have the authority to cancel or delay, but it’s pretty rare for weather to actually be illegal for dispatch for long periods of time. For delays of a couple of hours it’s easy to just delay until the fog is forecast to clear, or the winds forecast to subside, or whatever. For delays of many hours I’d probably just tell the coordinators “we can’t leave until 12 hours from now, do you want to cancel or delay?” But usually large delays like that are for something like a hurricane or blizzard and the company has already implemented large-scale cancels. There does come a time when we’re simply out of crews and something has to give so they finally start cancelling. I’m not sure exactly how they prioritize which flights to axe and which to run. I suspect it’s a combination of what’s possible with the crew time that’s left, positioning aircraft and crews for recovery the next day, and looking at things like hotel availability and international connections.

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imblegen@reddit

When I dispatched, it was for a charter operator that flew for a wide variety of clientele. For that kind of operation, what the customer wants is often the deciding factor between a delay or cancel. Sometimes the type of mission made the decision easy. (Oh, we’re going to miss the country cutoff time for an international flight and we’ll have to get all new permits? Cancel.) Inversely, some flights we would just delay however long it took to operate them. One of our cargo clients out of MIA was notorious for never cancelling anything, they would just keep delaying the entire string of flights until we were operating 48+ hours past original STD.

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jewfro451@reddit

Hey, I am a pilot and used to have network planning experience. Keeping it vague and general, common things to start a delay: -weather wx -maintenance mx -crew rest When it comes to a super long delay that may turn into a cancelation would be some of those factors to a higher degree or now intertwined with each other: -wx was initially the issue, but now a plane defect discovered is going to take longer because the current airport does not have the part. -mx issue first then wx turns bad -wx is rocking the crap out of the departure airport, crew duty times are being reached so they time-out, and airline has burned all of its reservists, so no available crews. -ive had overnight delays for part not available at airport. -ive had cancellations for wx. (From company perspective they have to look at not only can the airplane get it get in, but can it even get out)

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Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

Does the company look at the cost associated with no reserves (already paid for, for the most part) and the cost of offering open time in these cases? Do open time, flight still goes 5 hours late and make SOME money or cancel and make nothing but don't have to pay open time.

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jewfro451@reddit

-obviously yes from crew planning/network planning perspective, we look at that ~1.5 months in advanced to balance staffing. But the day of, In the heat of the moment, company doesn't look at cost of reserves....its more like "we need to put a fire out right now, we need a body, any body". And the company does not want to cancel a flight due to a staffing issue or no available bodies being available. So when they see available reserve coverage getting low and they know they will have some kind of expected network delay (predicted wx thunderstorm hurricand etc), then they would start to open the piggy bank and get people to take OT. Again, as expensive as it is to pay people OT, its more expensive if they cancel the flight, or definitely more expensive if there is a trend of cancellations that the airline could have prevented with more staffing (im talking about DOT putting fines on airlines, hurts not only the checkbook more but reputation of airline). Again, since I know decent feel for the game, theres times I have been able to pick up 300% (every airline uses different terminology for incentive flying) before it was offered to the rest of the pilot group. Because I looked at our flight board saw a bunch of delays/cancellation/wx, and could feel they were going to offer it shortly, plus I was already in position to work too. Does that answer your question?

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Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

Yes it does! Clear as mud, thank you! Just looking for the thought process behind it all just out of sheer curiosity.

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jewfro451@reddit

Yea it just depends. For the crew scheduler, or duty manager in operations, theres not necessarily an exact playbook in every situation. And the company is trusting that one manager or team of managers to make those decisions on the fly when they need to burn all their reservist, cancel a flight, or open the piggy bank for OT. Everyday is different beast, and they do their almost best to put out fires. Are there things that could have been prevented or reinforced before the dam breaking, absolutely. I've seen even the stupidest ops sht, where they sent my buddy CA to a outstation with no de ice truck on his day 6 of 6 when it was expected to ice over for 2 days. He specifically pleaded are you sure you want me to go to a station with no de ice truck, and operations says "Go Go Go". Because he got extended into 4 days off (after sending 4 replacement FOs for no reason and a broken airplane), he was able to get paid $4k for his operational extensions. Someone in scheduling definitely got chewed out.

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Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

So at least at that operation the answer to my question is just "vibes". Nice.

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dagertz@reddit

At my airline (regional) the decision making process on this can be pretty inconsistent. The Director of Operations or their designee is the person responsible for operational control of the airline, and only they can officially make the decision to cancel a flight. Sometimes the weather is just so bad that realistically the flight needs to be canceled or overnight delayed, but that doesn’t always happen right off the bat. In these situations it becomes PIC discretion on whether to go or delay the flight. Thankfully captains have this authority, although I wish that I didn’t have to use it as frequently. One time the company wanted us to go. Storms everywhere. Tried to talk dispatch into canceling or overnight delaying but didn’t have much luck with that. So I told them we have to delay. We timed out while waiting. They got a new crew to do the flight, but they also didn’t want to go. Only then did the flight get canceled. Another time we got ground stopped at an outstation when there was a single isolated thunderstorm at the hub. Flight got canceled even though we were nowhere close to timing out 🤷🏼‍♂️

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Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

Haha yep love the idea of a conga line of crew unwilling to fly a flight due to maintenance and weather. Pushy chief pilots and dispatch are the worst but I haven't had too much trouble yet.

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DaWolf85@reddit

When we delay, it's because there isn't any other choice. We always want to go as soon as possible, so we'll typically post whatever timeline maintenance/ATC/weather forecasts give us to start with, and then keep pushing it back as necessary. The flight gets cancelled or overnight delayed when the crew runs out of time and there's no replacement crew available. The preference on cancel/overnight delay is whether there's aircraft time available the next day, and a little bit of company preference. Flights also may get cancelled when the aircraft is needed elsewhere and the crew can be used while they still have time to reposition it to that location. It starts to get a little more complicated when you add aircraft swaps into the picture, of course, so the above is sort of the 'default' and then there might be a hard backstop of 'we swap the planes and it goes at this time'. But generally, if you're looking for possible cancellations, look for delays on lines of flying where the crew might be close to time anyway - 4-leg days, 3-leg days, 2 long legs, etc. Crew time is the most common reason we stop delaying and just cancel.

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Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

This is probably more baked into operating philosophy than daily operations but do costs ever come into the conversation? Reroute pay for the crew or trying to have the original crew fly it vs canceling it or offering premium for coverage? Ultimately if a aircraft is DELAYED overnight due to crew timing out or CANCELLED due to crew timing out, the aircraft (and crew) are out of position one way or the other, so I guess it's just a question of how best to get the aircraft back into its scheduled position. And adding in plane swaps definitely adds another layer of complexity to it, but I guess where does that fall into play as opposed to keeping the original airplane and just delaying? You can upgauge/downgauge to a different type (station GSE allowing) but also just same type, different tail.

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DaWolf85@reddit

At my airline, cost isn't really an object. I've seen planes flown empty transcontinental to pick up 2 flights, then flown back empty 😂 I'm sure not all airlines would do that though. What I was alluding to with delay vs. cancel is that some airlines, rather than formally overnight delay with the same flight number, cancel then do an extra section the next day with the same aircraft and usually the same crew. Obviously, if the aircraft and crew aren't needed elsewhere then they'll be used again to ultimately fly the flight. Swaps come into play when we can greatly mitigate the main delay or downline delays without seriously or at all impacting other flights. Downgauging we generally only try to do when loads are low - we'd rather delay than kick off 30 people. Upgauging, yeah it depends what the station can do, my airline has fairly similar types though so not a big problem for us. Both upgauging and downgauging require work by someone, usually the gate agent, to redo seat assignments as well.

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azbrewcrew@reddit

I will add that sometimes pax loads do come into play with regard to canceling a flight. Sometimes if you need to buy an aircraft to keep crews intact and protect downline operations you may sometimes take a flight with a very light load and either cancel it or backturn it behind a later inbound to preserve the operation. If you have the ability to accommodate all passengers over the next few flights it makes the decision to cancel a light load easier as well. Obviously these are very situational decisions and the goal is to complete the schedule as on time as possible but there are times where you will need to cut your losses for the greater good.

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Adventurous-Ad8219@reddit

In my experience as a prior crew scheduler and current pilot, it seems to be some weighted decision about how much will the operation be messed up downline, what us the capacity to reaccommodate passengers, and "how does this look for our stats?". On top of all of that, it's usually some overworked, underpaid MOD just making the best decision they can under pressure. Controllable Cancellation Factor, or CCF, is a big deal for airlines because it's a pretty universal metric for how "reliable" an airline is. CCF basically allows an airline to he judged based off how often the airline cancels for something that' "their fault". For example, if it's weather, that's beyond the airline's control. A classic example is, let's say the plane is in Des Moines and supposed to fly to MSP and then again from MSP to DTW, then finally from DTW to JFK. However, a huge snowstorm (or thunderstorm) hits MSP, a Ground Delay Program is either expected or in effect, and nobody is gonna get in for hours. Easy, just cancel the DSM-MSP and MSP-DTW legs and reposition the aircraft directly to DTW. That way you can operate the DTW-JFK on time. Sure, you canceled 2 flights, but those passengers were screwed anyway. You would have spent 3 hours delayed on the ground, everybody would have missed their connections, and by the time you got to MSP, half of the MSP-DTW passengers would have been missing and then by the time the crew gets to DTW they are going to be super late again operating the DTW-JFK leg if they don't time out anyway. It's the lesser of two evils, plus it's a weather delay so the airline doesn't really have to pay out for the cancelations On the other hand, let's say a plane goes down for maintenance. Now it's the airlines fault. It's controllable. This hurts the stats, so it matters more. Unless you really need that plane or crew somewhere else, everybody stays until it's finished. Now obviously, United is going to have a much longer leash on an EWR-NAP flight when they are the only one who does that route once a day, as opposed to an EWR-FRA where they can just cancel the flight and rebook everybody on the next flight or every give them to Lufthansa. I have never seen a flight cancel for low ridership. As a matter of fact, when I was a regional pilot we once returned to gate in Colorado Springs when preparing to fly to Denver. We deplaned and waited 3 hours for maintenance to drive from Denver and timed out while they worked on it. We went to the hotel and came back in the morning. At this point, every passenger had either driven or been reaccomodated. We had 0 passengers booked. The flight attendant brought up that she lived in Colorado Springs and we called dispatch to ask if we could leave her there since there were no passengers. Dispatch told us that we couldn't afford any cancelations and if we took the flight attendant off, we would legally have to cancel the flight and reclassify it as a reposition flight, which would hurt our CCF, since all revenue flights under part 121 are required to have the appropriate amount of flight attendants for the aircrafts configuration, not the load on the specific flight As far as predicting it for picking up open time, I'm not really sure it would be a direct correlation because crews time out in weather and airplanes get stranded so you'd have pairings where your picking up a plane that might be a repo of a canceled flight. It's impossible to predict when a plane will break down, but around the holidays people will call out (jeopardizing CCF) so expect stuff to come up when that hapoens

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Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

Haha I was totally joking on predicting it. Would be nice though! Totally interesting how the airlines balance all these factors into account and on the ground at the airport we certainly don't see the big picture with network planning. But I'm always shocked when a flight gets canceled for weather that's not really THAT bad but a flight that absolutely should have canceled just delays for hours and hours. I guess part of it comes down to how willing an airline is to pre-emptively cancel a flight as opposed to risk major network disruptions down the line. Ultimately, passengers will be upset either way and there'll always be at least SOME amount of network disruption. So it's just what's less painful. Down the line. Thanks for the detailed response!

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dumbassretail@reddit

It depends a lot on what the plane and crew is supposed to do next. If those two things can get to their scheduled end point with minimal impact to passengers, a flight is more likely to be cancelled. For this reason, an out and back from a hub is pretty easy to cancel. Everything else is more complicated and more likely to operate, even if it’s heavily delayed with few pax on board.

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Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

I suppose that's why the hub and spoke model of network planning is a bit more common than point to point. Can always just remove two legs, an out and back, from the schedule with little to no network disruption. How much does passenger load play into it? Will a network planner look and see that there's enough open seats on the next flight for all the passengers on the potentially canceled flight and say this one can be canceled vs delayed? Assuming the aircraft not making it to the destination isn't a consideration.

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Prof_Slappopotamus@reddit

Passenger count rarely comes into play, especially if it's an EAS route. The more important things, in no particular order are: ATC delays, weather routing, crew duty time, crew availability, aircraft maintenance requirements. Depending on the type and length of delays, there may also be some forward thinking in regards to gate space availability at destination. From various discussions with dispatch, I think the last one carries the most weight, depending on where in the system that airplane is and when it needs a specific check or needs an MEL cleared by a certain date.

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Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

Yeah I had a feeling that fleet planning had the biggest dick in the room for this conversation seeing that scheduled maintenance is probably the hardest thing to shuffle around. I know the regionals are almost always going to just delay since they're generally paid by departure and don't themselves care about "profit" off the flight. GoJet boasting they had a 99% completion rate when they'd just delay 48 hours.

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rFlyingTower@reddit

This is a copy of the original post body for posterity: --- Question for the dispatchers/network planners. What decision making goes into canceling a flight vs just delaying a flight by a few hours? I know Part 121 carriers can't just cancel a flight due to low passenger count/revenue, but I've flown flights that were delayed 4 hours and only had 5 passengers on them (out of 200ish available seats). So I guess, what's the company policy on this? Sometimes flights get delayed overnight for maintenance or a weather system like a squall line that can't be flown around or punched through, as opposed to just canceled. Only things I could think of going into it would be moving aircraft/crew into position and avaliable capacity on other flights for passengers affected by a cancelation. But I'd love to hear from anybody with a real answer ~~so I can predict it and pick up extra flying based on this~~. --- Please downvote this comment until it collapses. Questions about this comment? [Please see this wiki post before contacting the mods](https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/wiki/index/rflyingtower/). --- I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. If you have any questions, please [contact the mods of this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/flying).

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Canceling vs Delaying?

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23 Comments

Intelligent-Wrap-309@reddit

Brave-Chemical-6203@reddit

trying_to_adult_here@reddit

imblegen@reddit

jewfro451@reddit

Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

jewfro451@reddit

Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

jewfro451@reddit

Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

dagertz@reddit

Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

DaWolf85@reddit

Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

DaWolf85@reddit

azbrewcrew@reddit

Adventurous-Ad8219@reddit

Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

dumbassretail@reddit

Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

Prof_Slappopotamus@reddit

Urrolnis@reddit (OP)

rFlyingTower@reddit