Does Your Flight Stand a Chance Against 'The Cancellator'?

A fascinating cover story in this week’s Time magazine shows just how chaotic – and yet scientific – the process of cancelling a flight can be.

Entitled, “Airport Confidential: Inside the Strange World of Airline Cancellations,” the piece takes a look at the men and women who decide which planes are cancelled during inclement weather, and which planes fly.

The story notes at the very beginning that “the cancellation crisis also reflects how drastically the airline business has changed in the past decade. After 9/11, after the Great Recession, after bankruptcies and consolidations, the airlines have bounced back, stronger than ever but also more disciplined. Serial mergers have left Americans with just three legacy carriers, which means redundant or unprofitable flights are scrapped and planes are more crowded.”

Among the takeaways from the Time story:

* The reporter spent time with American Airlines, whose personnel have dubbed the combined computer/human operator of the program “The Cancellator.” An algorithm weighs which flights can be cancelled and which can be saved. Predictive models help decide when flights are cancelled a day ahead of time, or at least before you leave for the airport.

* In making decisions during a storm, American’s human operators were tracking monitors for federal air-route operations, one that superimposed all aircraft over the current weather radar, and yet a third that tracked American’s metrics during the storm, including such critical information as passenger-delay minutes – yes, whether you make your connecting flight is a metric – and whether crew members are in danger of reaching their hourly work maximums.

* The cancellations are not made in a capricious manner but there is a pecking order. International flights have a high priority, and domestic flights carryng crew to meet an international flight have high priority. If the majority of the passengers on your flight end at your destination and don’t connect, your flight is at risk for cancellation. And if you go frm hub to hub, or from city to city with frequent service, well, sorry. You’re easily re-booked so you have a likelihood of being cancelled as well.

* Finally, money does talk. The Cancellator takes into account fares paid. So as the story points out, a flight from Dallas to Orlando filled with leisure flyers who paid $300 a ticket is lower on the scale than a flight from Dallas to Detroit loaded with business-fare passengers who paid $500 a ticket.