The number of flight delays and cancellations among the major airlines is staggering and seems to be increasing with each passing month. While delays caused by bad weather can't always be avoided, some airlines are notorious for delaying or canceling flights for no apparent reason, and then blaming imaginary weather or air traffic control problems to avoid having to take financial responsibility for the problems they cause for their passengers.Before leaving home, check with your airline to insure your flight is running on-time. When you do this, don't just ask about your initial flight, however. If you're making a connection in another city, make sure your connecting flight(s) are running on-time as well. You may discover that getting to your connecting city will be easy, but there are significant delays in that connecting city, which could dramatically delay your travels.
If you determine this to be the case, ask the airline to reroute you to your final destination before you leave your home city. This might change your travel itinerary, but it could save you many hours of sitting in an airport waiting for a connecting flight to depart.
There are several ways you can confirm a flight's status before your departure. You can call the airline directly (via its toll-free phone number). You can go to the airline's website and click on the "Flight Status" (or equivalent icon). Or, you can visit the FlightView.com website, which offers real-time flight information for all major airlines, plus real-time information about major airport problems across the country. (This website also works well on an iPhone and many other wireless phones and PDAs.) Services like Travelocity.com, Hotwire.com and Orbitz.com, for example, also allow web surfers to track flights.
If you need to change your travel arrangements, contact the airline directly. On the same-day you travel, if you need to be re-routed due to bad weather or flight delays, there is no charge to do this. You may, however, have to fly stand-by. If this is the case, make sure you won't get stuck in a connecting city if the flight you want to get on is full.
Every month, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics publishes a report that details the on-time performance of every major airline. You can also track the overall on-time performance of a specific flight to see how often it gets delayed or cancelled. This website can be found at http://www.transtats.bts.gov/OT_Delay/OT_DelayCause1.asp.
Dealing with flight delays can be extremely frustrating. If you determine what problems you might encounter before departing and can get the airline to reroute you to avoid those problems, you might luck out and reach your destination on-time, or at least with minimal frustration. Good luck! Depending on what airline you're flying with, you'll probably need it!
"An overwhelming 77 percent of consumers who said they had flown in the last three months experienced flight delays or cancellations, according to a recent poll conducted by AIG Travel Guard. Nearly 28 percent experienced moderate delays, another 27 percent were met by slight delays, 18 percent had been subjected to extensive delays and four percent stated their flight had been cancelled...Sixty-five percent of consumers polled had been delayed up to five hours, with another 10 percent having been delayed up to 24 hours or longer."
Posts
