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Cancelled Flights

Old 25th Jun 2007, 13:33
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Cancelled Flights

I was recently booked onto an internal UK flight (carrier shall remain nameless). With not long to go to departure, the flight was cancelled, and we were all put onto the next flight, leaving 3 hours later. The cancellation was apparently due to 'technical problems', but the cynic in me thinks that the carrier had 2 half-full flights, so pulled the earlier one to fill up the later one. Does this go on?
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Old 25th Jun 2007, 19:41
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Lady Lexxington
 
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Not really no, because then it leaves an a/c out of position and buggers up other flights on that days programme.

Airlines will, however combine if they are short of a/c for whatever reason, though it is very rare that this happens. Unless your internal flight was on an airline beginning with "F".
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Old 28th Jun 2007, 14:23
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No, airlines do not arbitrarily cancel flights a few minutes before departure because of low loads, they are quite good at forecasting what the load and revenue will be well in advance and cancelling causes gross problems elsewhere, quite apart from bringing the CAA down on you and saying you don't have the resources to run your operation (cue dismissal of the Ops Director).

What does happen where there is a tech issue and you become an aircraft down is you make a judgement on how best to reorganise things to handle it. For example, assume there are two flights departing at 6pm one evening to separate destinations, one is the last flight of the day, the other has another flight at 8pm. Should either of the aircraft go tech or be grossly delayed inbound it is obviously better to scrub the one to the destination where pax can be served by the later flight, and put the remaining good aircraft on the destination where there is no alternative.

Likewise, say there are three simultaneous departures but you are suddenly one aircraft down. The loads on the three flights are 100%, 70%, and 30%. Which one do you cancel ? Can you see how the "because of low loads" story gets currency ?
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Old 28th Jun 2007, 16:50
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Alba Gu Brath
 
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WHBM - not teaching you to suck eggs, but.....

Load factor would only be one consideration. Yield would play, possibly, a higher part than pure load factor. No point cancelling yer most profitable flight in favour of one that was only just breaking even!
Route sensitivity also comes into it. New routes, or those that have been subject to recent heavy advertising, would be avoided if possible. Doesn't court favour with the pax & press if you advertise how wonderful the new route is, only to start cancelling it.
Pax re-accomodation plays a big part. It's easier to get pax from (say) LGW-NCL than from LGW-JER.

However, I think the summary for snapper is:-

No, flights wouldn't (normally) be cancelled for the reasons you give. Tech snags will always be treated with respect by engineering and ops and, if the snag is going to take time to fix, then cancellations will often happen. You were in a fortunate position to have an alternative flight fairly soon afterwards.
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Old 29th Jun 2007, 07:48
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WHBM wrote (For example, assume there are two flights departing at 6pm one evening to separate destinations, one is the last flight of the day, the other has another flight at 8pm. Should either of the aircraft go tech or be grossly delayed inbound it is obviously better to scrub the one to the destination where pax can be served by the later flight, and put the remaining good aircraft on the destination where there is no alternative.)

That didn't happen to me, I was on the only flight by FlyBe from SOU to LPL and they cancelled it and put us on the MAN flight which had a later flight that day! They bussed us and the pax on the return flight to MAN.
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Old 29th Jun 2007, 10:11
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Big Tudor, you are quite correct that the decision making process is more complex than I described, I was just trying to condense the complete thing into two paragraphs

Notably I was writing this having just seen the previous evening exactly what I described, FlyBe at Belfast City cancelling an Edinburgh and transferring pax, who were already in the departure lounge, onto a later flight. Colleague with me was travelling with them to Southampton on the last flight of the day and said it was fortunate it was not his plane which had gone tech, and I had explained to him in the terms I wrote here how you decide what to cancel if the situation arises.

Note too how many of us on this thread are referring to FlyBe, they must surely be coming to the attention of the CAA as being over-extended somewhere along the line and getting AOG rather too often. I hope they get through into a better time.
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Old 2nd Jul 2007, 08:21
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Thumbs down Flybe Delays and cancellations

Continuing story of cancelled flights which are merged with the a later flight for "operational reasons"

One of my colleauges who was delayed by over 5 hours has requested his fare back as per ECC Rules. 2 emails later has a response that they will reply within 28 days as they are currently receiving a higher level of compliants than normal!!

Latest updates here http://www.airlinequality.com/Forum/flybe-1.htm
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Old 2nd Jul 2007, 11:21
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Interetsingly (or not as the case maybe) I was flying back from STR-LHR last week, and received a text on Tuesday night (return flight on Friday) saying my flight had been cancelled and that was that. Anyway logged into said companies web site the next day, and my flight had indeed been cancelled. I would have thought that I would have been auto booked onto the next flight, but I had to call in to re-arrange which wasn'y a problem.

Anyway, the point is how would they know so far in advance to cancel the flight? - loading, misplaced an aircraft?
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