I don’t fly much but I noticed things like “the same flight number takes off at the same time each day and is always the same plane as a different flight number coming the other direction.”
It must really help all the employees with routine and consistency even if it’s not optimal.
Most airlines have schedules that are consistent day-to-day. It's the efficiency vs. resiliency tradeoff that's interesting. I'd probably summarize it as "don't fly Southwest in the winter."
That said, I flew Southwest from SJC to LAS for CES one year, connecting in SAN. Weather wasn't great, and they'd put you on the next available flight with an empty seat. They were even able to shuffle people without going up to the podium. Legacy carriers would have drug their feet, there'd be a line, and they'd charge for the privilege of changing flights.
I'd look at it the other way around: cancelling is so annoying for them that they're often the last ones to do it (barring catastrophic collapse, of course).
When I was traveling weekly out of Chicago, I always made sure to bring my Southwest credit card, just in case. Southwest sucks, but it gets you home.
My sister was recently stranded in DFW trying to make it to SFO when American Airlines canceled her flight. They were happy to substitute another flight... to Sacramento.
So the two-hour round trip to pick her up from SFO turned into an eight-hour round trip to Sacramento. I'm amazed this was considered an acceptable substitute. Would have been nice if American was willing to get you home in the event of canceled flights.
(We could see available seats on flights from DFW to SFO at that time from Delta and Alaska. But those seats were "not available to American rebooking agents". It seems like that should have been American's problem, not ours.)
Footnote: even though my sister had to be rebooked onto the American flight to Sacramento, American didn't bother rerouting her luggage, which they sent to SFO. I guess canceling the flight meant "the plane will still fly, but without passengers".
You live 1 hour away from SFO but 4 hours away from SAC? SFO is two hours away from SAC. How is that possible? Maybe it's 3 hours away if there is traffic.
I realize that this was inconvenient and a big hassle, so I don't want to make light of it, but something seems off with the geography.
No, the travel time to and from SMF doesn't total eight hours. But there is overhead involved in making long trips that isn't necessary for short trips.
- You need to allow for a wider margin of error in predicting travel times, which means leaving earlier than strictly necessary. But leaving early doesn't mean getting back early; you have to wait for the plane to debark.
- This trip was long enough to be more demanding than an electric car could handle, requiring 30 minutes of time spent parked and charging the car.
- More time was wasted waiting for the luggage to show up; we were not informed that it hadn't been sent.
At the very least, they were able to get her over the Sierras which are being dumped on right now. If they got her even to Reno, good luck getting over Donner or Echo summit for the next few days.
United proactively rebooks you on a new flight if you will misconnect, gives you options in the app, and issues waivers that let you avoid weather by rebooking your own flight (often waiving fare differences as well). Haven't flown Delta or American as much, but at least United's tech is a bit more modern.
As a matter of course I avoid United, and American doesn't have much presence out of SFO or OAK. Delta has done right by me each and every time something's come up.
Stuck on the tarmac in the snow and miss the connecting flight (last of the day)? They automatically rebooked me on another airline and I got a notification from the app as soon as I had reception.
3+ SFO bound flights delayed at JFK because of crazy winds at SFO? They proactively encouraged people to rebook, gratis. I rebooked on a flight the next day on nicer equipment, through the app, went into town, grabbed some bagels and had a flight at a nearly ideal time of day.
Regional plane goes tech? They had a red coat out and about keeping everyone informed.
Missed a flight because I misread the departure time? They sold me a same day ticket on the next flight at a hefty discount and I kept the inbound leg.
Southwest has a huge disadvantage and it's not tech: it's the lack of interline agreements. Nearly every other airline (except perhaps Spirit) can rebook you on another carrier when things go sideways. Southwest simply can't. With an interline agreement in place you'd have far fewer people getting stuck with exorbitant last minute fares.
In general though don't fly when you're getting unusual weather. Less than an inch of snow at PDX throws everything into chaos (and Portlanders call it fucking snowpocalypse). A few inches of snow at PWM and they don't even blink.
Notably, per the Alaska agent I spoke to about my cancelled Alaska flight, Delta doesn't let other airlines rebook on Delta flights. That may just be an Alaska/Delta thing but it's not obvious full reciprocity.
I find it hard to believe that Delta (or any other major airline) wouldn't reciprocate. When I got rebooked onto an Alaska flight, the gate agents were openly annoyed at having to accommodate Delta passengers. However, the relationship between Alaska and Delta has grown more adversarial so who knows.
I should also add that a few years back when my Southwest flight out of SFO got cancelled I was able to book a seat on a flight out of OAK with a minimum of effort. I think I had to pay the difference in fare though. When it works, it works, but the go it alone attitude will only take you so far.
Someone below linked this company as an example of resiliency tools used in airfare. Interestingly, there's a testimonial from United on one of the front page videos.
Maybe not 1:1 for what you're describing, but it solution/reason, but does seem like a possible sign that they're investing in proactive tools.
Yeah delta will do this as well. The app will let you pick any flight that day for free if you do not like the one it auto rebooked you on. I usually just take the one it gives me, but if it tries to route me through DTW or MSP with bad weather in the winter I will try to find one that goes through ATL instead.
My American flight on Monday was delayed (crew rest requirement was the reason given, which actually means not enough crew). It was a connecting flight so once it was about 90 min delayed it wouldn’t be possible to make the other leg.
AA live chat said they couldn’t help (other than rebooking 2 days later which would be pointless) but when I called they were able to drop the connection inbound and outbound so I could drive to the hub city airport (cost me like 2 hours each way, nbd).
They fixed it in like 3 minutes on the phone but it seems like they have to do it in a super hacky way because I had to check in at the airport which was no fun with long holiday lines.
Delta’s irregular ops procedures have always treated me right (in comms and in performance) and their app is pretty decent.
If I’ve had a missed connection en route, I’ll generally land and the app tells me what they’ve already rebooked me onto, but I have a choice of many different alternatives (usually) and can pick among them without cost and without waiting in a call queue.
Delta offers you a buggy website to rebook for no fee. I changed to a flight that was about $1,000 more expensive a few days ago. (note that the significant price change is an edge case caused by travelling on Christmas being particularly undesirable)
United is absolute worst. Many of my colleagues are frequent flyers on United. I just do not trust United. They lost it completely when they caused that unnecessary incident where they forcibly removed that doctor from a plane. And then there is United Breaks Guitar, the viral book about their "legendary" customer service. I will never fly that airline.
In that book, the ordinary logistical setup is that ships tend to cover individual transit routes, which means that a delay affecting one ship doesn't spread through the system. Malcom McLean tries to set up a system of ships that always sail east instead, and it fails very badly, because delays on each individual leg of the (infinitely long!) route accumulate instead of happening and then fading away.
Optimal isn't the right way to think about it. It's a tradeoff. Hub-and-spoke is usually better at getting you to your destination in less absolute time given the same number of total flights since you can have more frequent "shuttle flights" that travel to the hub, exchange goods/passengers, and shuttle back. Point-to-point on the other hand, is better for minimizing travel time since you go directly to the destination.
I heard it’s optimal for staffing though because you can just have people on standby living near your spokes, which would be important if you’re dealing with cancellations, which can severely cascade with point to point
It must really help all the employees with routine and consistency even if it’s not optimal.