An inside look at flight cancellations for those who wonder....

[Northbeach]

I suspect you have heard the story about alligators the size of small busses stalking the dark recesses of the sewer system beneath New York City haven’t you? The beasts started out life as pets, abandoned by their owners, who supposedly flushed them down the household toilet to get rid of them. Instead of perishing, the alligators grew to enormous size and pose great hazards to the unfortunate utility worker whose job forces them into the subterranean domain of the oversized reptilian killers. And you have also heard that the reason airlines cancel flights is because that flight is not full. The airline is not making “enough money” on that flight. So, to solve that immediate problem the airline just posts a “Cancelled” notice for that flight. You can almost see the condescending airline employees hidden away in the “break room” giggling at the consternation of the paying passenger who is left to twist in the wind.

Both of these stories are believed by many people. Both are nonsense! The traveling public is angry, and being in that infuriated state, it is easy to gravitate to some idea if that suggestion gives a plausible explanation for a point of irritation. This is especially true if that explanation serves to further vilify the already hated airline industry.

The “airline” is a never sleeping complex commercial enterprise. It is a “system” of human and mechanical resources in constant motion. Flight cancellations more accurately should be compared to chest pains; possible symptoms of a more serious problem. Flight cancellations are not financial windfalls. Money-wise bad things happen when the airplanes stop moving.

The following is a partial list of the damaging consequences of canceling a flight. Nobody is giggling when the schedule falls apart.

Fixed Costs. The airline does not escape its fixed costs for the flight when a flight cancels. The airline will still have to pay the lease payment on the jet as well as the insurance costs. And, the crew will be paid for the trip, even if the flight doesn’t depart (at most but not all airlines). It is costly to keep the airplane idle. Aircraft generate income when they are moving paying passengers and freight not when it is sitting idle at some gate.

A Single flight is not a valid economic sample. The airline is not looking at your 8:00 AM Tuesday morning flight from Gatwick to Dublin (or Chicago to Charlotte) in isolation. Each specific flight is evaluated over the course of weeks or months to see if the route is lucrative. Therefore, any one given day’s passenger load factor is not significant in terms of having a valid economic analysis for the route; any more than forming a conclusion for a national or international poll would be if that supposition was based on a random single phone call.

If the flight fails to generate profit, over the course of time, it will be dropped from the schedule. Much the same way a professional sports player will be cut from the roster if that athlete doesn’t produce over whatever time limit is used for their evaluation. The decision to cut that individual from the roster isn’t made based on how the athlete reacted to a single isolated event early in the season. In the same way neither is a flight cancelled because it doesn’t happen to be a money maker today on an otherwise profitable route.

Domino effect. When your flight cancels it not only strands you, it also strands everybody else that was scheduled to fly on that airplane. If you thought that was an obvious statement and that I was referring to your fellow passengers, scheduled on the same flight you were which was just cancelled, you are missing my point. Usually, the airline cannot cancel a single flight without that act having negative consequences for many other flights.

Those anti-gravity flying machines with the airline’s name painted on the side spend more than half the available time in the air. It is common for them to land at five, six or even more cities in a given “day”. Depending on when that flight cancels it could affect hundreds of people. If that airplane doesn’t fly from city three to city four then it isn’t going to be at city four to fly to city five and so on. At each city an entire aircraft full of passengers are stranded.

Further, the pilots and flight attendants were likely scheduled for more work at the regularly scheduled destination of the cancelled flight. Because of the cancellation, the crew isn’t where they are supposed to be. Without the crew in position the next airplane doesn’t move either. If they were scheduled to change planes now the airline has two airplanes that aren’t moving further compounding the debacle. Trust me, nobody is giggling-it’s a mess.

Matching qualified aircrews with airplanes is a complex job. Your pilots can only fly one “type” of airplane (normally). For example I am a Boeing 737 Captain. I am not qualified to fly an Airbus 320, a Boeing 757 or a MD-80. Airline crew scheduling must match properly qualified crews with the jets that are available. This is an elaborate scheduling dance and properly matched “partners” are essential. Flight cancellations cause mayhem in this area. It is expensive to fly crews around in the back of airplanes (You have seen those uniformed flight crewmembers sitting in the back of a flight - it’s called “deadheading.”) to reposition them to where they should have been in the first place. It is a domino effect, and it is all expensive and negative.

Gate congestion. The cancellation of a flight places a jet where it isn’t supposed to be-stuck at a gate. In many places gate space is at a premium. Not having a gate available becomes another headache for the ground operations crew who has to scramble finding places to put jets that are already in the air, and headed for the gate, that is now occupied by the cancelled flight. At major hubs it is common for the gates to be scheduled all day long with little time between flights.

Maintenance requirements are another deterrent to canceling flights. Often airplanes are scheduled for some inspection or the replacement of some specific time limited part to take place at the completion of its flight. This necessary work cannot be done, much of the time, while the airplane is in revenue service (flying paying passengers & freight). The maintenance of the fleet is an ongoing process and a great deal of it happens between the hours of midnight and 6 AM when aircraft utilization is lower.

Component availability and the physical presence of skilled labor to do the required maintenance task require a specific airplane to be at specific airport at specific times. If your flight cancels, then it may not get where it needs to be to have the required maintenance done. If that maintenance is not done then the airplane is not legal to fly the next day. Canceling flights often disrupts the intricate placement of the airplanes necessary for ongoing maintenance.

If the reasons not to cancel a flight are so compelling why then does it happen with such frequency?

“The experience” has happened to almost everyone. You arrive early at the airport with your paid ticket in hand. The glamour and excitement of flying vanished decades ago somewhere between Woodstock and Watergate. Today you are just hoping for a safe flight, some elbow room, an on time arrival and a negative free traveling experience. Really, it’s not much to ask for in return for your hard earned money that you parted with weeks ago to make this trip.

This time when you arrive at the airport and look at the monitor that lists the flights there staring you in the face is that "Cancelled" word; now what? The reason you fly is to save time and to be someplace important when you need to be there. Canceling your flight jeopardizes all your important plans and commitments. You have several questions that you want answered. Why was the flight cancelled? Why wasn’t I notified when I could have made other plans? How and when am I going to get to Heathrow? Will I be stuck in a lousy seat? Will there be room for me on the next flight? You ought to be asking at least one more question. That question should be: what does this cancellation tell me about the health, integrity and operational reliability of this airline?

An isolated cancellation or a series of cancellations because of some major storm/disaster are probably not indicative of some systemic failure on the part of the airline. Conversely, and I want to emphasize this, frequent cancellations may be symptoms of deep operational shortcomings and signify that the airline is dysfunctional. I can’t address every possible reason for a flight cancellation; but here are some of the more common causes.

Mechanical break downs. The last jet I flew was turned over to me after it had flown through the night. I flew it for 6 hours before I was done with it. Forty minutes after I turned it over to the crew that met us, they took the same jet out of the country on another 6 hour flight. Airplanes are like any other highly utilized machine, sometimes parts wear out and the airplane breaks down. Your airline cannot afford to have a multi-million Dollar/Euro jet sitting around on the off chance it may be used. That is why most airlines do not have any spare airplanes available to fill in the gap left by some other airplane when it breaks down.

Here is where the airlines get creative. There may be nothing wrong with your jet scheduled for the Chicago to Charlotte flight (or Milan to Paris). But six gates down, the Chicago to Miami flight, that is full, just broke down and it won’t be repaired for a long time. Sometimes the airline will cancel “your” Chicago to Charlotte flight with only a 1/3 of the seats full and take that airplane away to service the Chicago to Miami flight that was completely full. Overall for the “system” it is less disrupting to inconvenience the relatively few people on the Chicago to Charlotte rather than the many who are trying to get to Miami from Chicago.

This is why some flights are more vulnerable to cancellations than others. If your airline has many flights per day between two cities, one or more of those midday flights, not the first or last flight of the day, are likely targets for cancellations should the need to divert resources arise. Usually the passengers can be accommodated on one of the later flights. Inconvenient – yes. Good for business? No. But, given the situation the airline finds itself in, the airline will allocate its resources to minimize the overall negative consequences.

Weather delays. In spite of what you may have been told, airliners are unable fly in every imaginable kind of weather. The “problem” weather can be at the departure station, enroute, or at the arrival station or any combination of the preceding. Different airplanes and crews have different limits on the weather they may operate in. Some airplanes and crews have a particular low visibility certification (called category three-Cat III for short) others do not. Other times the pilots must operate on more restrictive weather requirements because of lack of total experience on that kind of equipment or in their crew position (called a high-minimums crew). Occasionally the airplane is functioning at a reduced capability because of some equipment constraint (MEL limitation) and the combination of existing weather and those constraints may prohibit the flight from taking place.

Fog too dense will prevent your crew from landing or departing. Thunderstorms in the area may prevent your crew from attempting to depart or land the airplane because of potentially dangerous windshear. Too heavy of a snowstorm rendering the airline incapable of keeping the wings and body free of ice & snow prior to departure, will lead to a cancellations. Further, if the temperature is too hot, too cold or barometric pressure too low those extreme conditions can lead to flight cancellations because they exceed the environmental conditions the airplane was certified to fly in. Active volcanoes may emit dangerous ash clouds. If that hazard exists it will shut down or curtail flights as Europe recently experienced.

Hurricanes, tornadoes, or huge winter ice & snow storms in the area may cause Air Traffic Control to shut down, or delay, traffic headed into the region. This is called a “ground stop” where aircraft are prohibited from departing. It is designed to relieve congestive pressures on the Air Traffic Control sector(s) that are being most effected by the hazardous weather.

Crew rest/duty limitations. Your crew is required by national and international aviation regulations to carefully monitor how long they have been without “required rest”. When those time limits are reached your crew is done, legally they are prohibited from continuing to work. The nature of your flight crew’s job requires us to perform near flawlessly in a threat filled rapidly changing environment. Ultimately crew rest regulations are written, and enforced, for your safety. You really don’t want your crew flying that demanding low visibility approach in turbulence at 4 in the morning after they have been up for 18 hours on the last day of a 5 day trip. Trust me, when your crew times out due to duty limitations they are not performing well and need to get out of the cockpit.

I remember being the Captain on a memorable flight some years ago; the destination city had several good airports and was experiencing excellent weather-so far so good! Consequently we had an adequate amount of fuel for the conditions but we were not carrying much “extra” fuel. However, nobody forecasted the earthquake that struck when we were about 40 minutes out. Of course the earthquake closed down the primary airport as the control tower was evacuated and portions of Air Traffic Control went silent over the radio (they had evacuated their buildings as well). Suddenly, none of those close airports were available as each runway had to be checked out for possible earthquake damage before the airport could accept landing aircraft. As a crew we had to process a lot of fragmented information and make several important decisions quickly (limited amount of fuel) and accurately. Fatigued minds do not make the best decisions. Crew duty regulations are for your safety.

Staffing problems. One U.S airline was in the news some time ago after canceling over 500 flights. They publicly blamed their pilots for the cancellations accusing them of not coming to work. The pilots in turn responded by explaining that they had been warning management for months that they did not have the staffing levels to meet the scheduling demands for the summer flying. That particular airline had a long history of bitter labor management relations. Unfortunately, staffing problems plague just about every carrier.

It is revealing how world champion sports teams have no problem filling their roster with motivated elite athletes who want to play for them; nor do they have any trouble filling up their stadiums with adoring fans, or their bank accounts from the wealth that flows from success. I guess we don’t have any world championship caliber airlines any more in this country (USA), despite what the public relations & advertising hype claims. Regardless of whose fault it is; staffing problems account for many flight cancellations.

Security issues. In some cases security intelligence leads to the cancellation of a flight. This is uncommon and mostly affects international flights to/from particularly troubled regions.

Frequent flight cancellations are a warning sign of operational problems plaguing the carrier. With the exception of extreme weather, most of the reasons for frequent cancellations can be traced back to operational failures. Maintenance programs should identify parts needing replacement prior to them failing. When equipment does fail having the skilled labor to make timely repairs and having the necessary parts available are management’s responsibility.

Proper hiring, scheduling and staffing practices should preclude most staffing issues and keep crews from being unable to complete their duty assignments.

Cancellations can be viewed as chest pains, if the patient is experiencing frequent severe chest pains and is virtually immobilized the condition is a clear warning signs of impending disaster. If your airline’s airplanes are chronically breaking down it may be that the fleet is old, worn out, and no longer reliable. Or worse, the airline is not spending the necessary money to keep the aircraft in good repair. Run; do not walk, away from any airline that fails the mechanical reliability test!

If most of the employees are sullen, withdrawn and borderline hostile much of the time that pattern of behavior is a good indication that the airline is a lousy place to work. Unmotivated, distant and uncaring employees are not a recipe for a successful flight. If that is your current experience perhaps you should look for a different carrier for your transportation needs.

Respectfully,

Northbeach