Delta announced a new roving cancellation policy. The cancellations will be made couple of days before the actual flight if the load is low.

<b>http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/051004/delta_flights.html?.v=7</b>

AA is cancelling 15 flights domestically and 1 international, ORD-NGO. Same explanation.

I believe this will become very common in the near future.

Airline stocks did shoot up on the reports of higher loads and oil prices dropping substantially. I was very happy today with my AA stock, but I still believe that the worst is yet to come with slow winter travel almost here.

The point?

Keep an eye on your reservations.

Continental is apparently doing something similar. Was on a flight where they downsized the plane due to low load. But they had to ask for volunteers to go on a different flight because of fuel considerations (apparently with the people and luggage they had, it was too heavy).

Even with topping off the fuel tanks as much as possible, we didn't make it into our airport and had to land elsewhere to refuel. So, a lot of us missed our connecitons.

I think this and the above-mentioned cancellations are going to be more frequent occurances. So we have to be prepared for sudden schedule changes.

nibblette - What route and when were you flying? Do you remember the type of planes scheduled and substitued? And did they announce to you that they substitute the plane due to low load? Just curious.

It was supposed to be a 737-800. Don't know what it was changed to. Don't know if it was a smaller 737 model or one of the MD models. But every seat was filled and the number of rows was much less than the 737-800 I flew in previously.
I overhead a Continental employee telling another employee traveling on the plane that our delay was because of the plane switch and need to top-off tanks because of load factor. BTW, A LOT of the passengers were obese! Don't know if that was a factor in us not making it to Houston.

I don't think that this is a business model that can work. It will stop me from flying Delta.

Nice spin that they are saying it is beig done as an energy saving move, when we all know they would go through 10 times as much energy, as long as it was profitable.

Keith

nibblette - I don't think CO changes your flight because of low load. But because of plane availability, probably due to mechanical failures of some plane, somewhere.

Looks like they substitute for a 737-500. If it's totally full, that'll be over 110 passengers. Or at least 70% filled on the 737-800. They're not going to go through all the trouble unless they have to.

rkkwan,
I actually HEARD the employee saying that the plane switch was due to low passenger numbers, not for mechanical reasons. It was a purely financial move.

<b>niblette</b>,

I've heard airline employees say a lot of things that were not even remotely true. Especially FAs, they are famous for making assumptions based on little on no actual facts.

I'm not saying that it wasn't true in this case, but trust me, many of these employees know a lot less than some of the frequent flyers.

I get to call the exclusive Executive Platinum desk of AA when I need to deal with the airline. These are best of the best AA reservation employees with years of seniority, yet there are times when I have to guide them through some procedures or tell them of an upcoming service change or explain to them that it is the way it is. Just because they are employees, it doesn't necessarly mean that they have all the &quot;inside&quot; knowledge, especially when working for a huge corporation like a major airline where one hand doesn't know what the other hand does half of the time.

I will agree with &lt;rkkwan on this one. There is no way that CO would substitute an airplane that's about 75% full for a smaller one just because of the load. It would just cause too many problems for scheduling for a very if any financial return, <b>unless</b> CO needed the bigger plane for another route. That is still very hard to do. The scheduling office hates to do that. The airlines policy has always been that it's easier to bump 5-10 passengers than to move planes around. It's a very complex scheduling system that hates to be interupted for any reason unless it's something very major.

Duh, who in right mind would book a Delta flight now? Are they trying to drive away customers? This is the stupidest policy I've every heard of. The airlines ability to anger their customers never ceases to amaze me.

I think Delta didn't get into their current situation by making good business decisions.

I'm curious as to whether they considered the location of their planes when they made this decision. My understanding is that planes don't sit around much at all; they are either flying or undergoing maintenance. So if you cancel a flight from A to B, you probably won't have that plane in B for a scheduled flight from B to C.

Perhaps this was forced on them. When companies go into bankruptcy, they almost always have arranged some kind of financing to give them the cash they need to continue operating; at the same time, suppliers often refuse to extend any more credit, so the company has to pay cash to get supplies. I wonder if Delta doesn't have sufficient resources to pay cash for fuel, so they have to limit their flights. As a consumer, I wouldn't fly an airline that has a roving cancellation policy; better they drop some routes permanently, than try to sell tickets on a flight that may or may not happen.