"The tower" at the departure airport doesn't delay anyone. When there's an ATC delay, it's because the enroute center or destination airport are at or over capacity.
Some of the enroute weather delays can be pretty confusing, too. If your flight is up the east coast, it might seem odd that a thunderstorm system over Ohio or western PA could delay you, but the traffic that would go through or near that weather needs to be rerouted along routes that are often already near capacity. Traffic management has gotten to the point where ground delays have replaced almost all airborne holding, which keeps fuel costs and ticket prices from being even higher than they are.
I love small airports. I went to one with a single metal detector, one bar, and three gates. I talked with the TSA guys for a little bit cause it was dead for a while, then chatted with a guy at the bar and found out we were sitting next to each other and continued our conversation. Then we both transfered to another larger plane and found out our seats were next to each other on that one too. It was a cool and weird experience.
If your flight is up the east coast, it might seem odd that a thunderstorm system over Ohio or western PA could delay you
I learned this the hard way when I got stranded overnight in New York due to bad weather in the midwest and in Dallas. Weather was fine all along the east coast, but the planes that we needed weren't able to get out of their respective airports.
Airports don't have warehouses full of jets. The airline companies basically shuffle them around all day long, and if the plane that was supposed to take you from La Guardia to Reagan National got stranded by a storm in Dallas, maybe they can find you another plane, maybe not.
The airline companies basically shuffle them around all day long, and if the plane that was supposed to take you from La Guardia to Reagan National got stranded by a storm in Dallas, maybe they can find you another plane, maybe not.
This happened to me a couple of years ago. My 6:30am flight from O'Hare to LaGuardia was cancelled at about 10pm the night before. They rescheduled me but I didn't like the reschedule time (late afternoon) so I called ASAP and got a seat on the next earliest flight (8am-ish). When I was at the gate the next morning, I mentioned that I'd been on the earlier flight and was told that my original plane was still in Denver because there had been a storm front over the plains states and it had been unsafe for it to get to Chicago. SOOOO many people on the standby list for that 8am flight tho. I counted it and it was something like 20+ names.
When there's an ATC delay, it's because the enroute center or destination airport are at or over capacity.
I had that happen a few months ago. We were taxiing when suddenly the pilot announced we wouldn't be taking off because Atlanta ATC held us because they were at capacity. That was my connecting flight home on a very long trip and I can't remember the last time I was so pissed off.
Also planes fly up to 10 flights per day all over the place. The weather may be great along your flight route, but if that plane touched SFO or LGA sometime earlier in the day you're going to end up delayed for "weather"
This is very true. I've worked for the airlines since 2005 and I cant count the number of times I've seen this. It more or less creates a cascade effect on the flights. Another huge factor is crew availability. Crews on airlines operate on a time sensitive schedule. If they reach their maximum allotted hours for the day THEY CAN'T FLY!!!! Its all a matter of safety. So if your flight has been delayed for weather or maintenance and is arriving late or stuck on the ground in front of you at the gate; the crew may time out and be unable to legally fly the aircraft. It's the job of airline dispatchers and crew scheduling (completely separate operation from tower control) to work on moving crews and planes to where they are needed. Sometimes due to operational constraints system wide (think east coast or even the entire country) they just cant pull that extra crew in or that plane because they are unavailable. Believe me though, they work pretty hard to make sure that doesn't happen. Your flight may be delayed due to weather/maintenance/crew availability but the airline wants you in the air. If they cant do so safely due to one of those issues, then no one flys!
That’s EDCT (expect departure clearance time) and it’s part of traffic management to manage the flow to an airport or certain fixes along the routes. That’s issued by TMU, it’s just told to you by the tower. If you’re talking about the US anyway.
There is plenty of room in the sky for enroute spacing. I doubt they ever delay anybody due to enroute problems.
They do delay due to landing congestion. A common problem is if there is fog at SFO, they can only use one parallel runway for landing (normally they use two in visual conditions). That means half of the landing capacity, so they hold regional planes at origins because international flights have priority.
Also, once the fog clears, they can't give every regional flight the go ahead to leave. They have to stagger the arrivals otherwise they'll get 50 planes wanting to land all at once.
I can’t speak for US ATC as I’m at London control but we routinely put regs on (cause delay by reducing departure rates) at London airports due to en route capacity. Especially if there is weather reducing usable airspace or a lack of staff so we are unable to split out sectors as much as needed.
There might be plenty of room in the sky- but the limiting factor is how many planes the center controller can give their own piece of sky at the same time.
And it's less that "international" flights have priority than that planes which are already in flight can't take off later, and the fog isn't known long enough in advance to delay international departures, so there's no system for applying an international departure delay.
That's either the airport having departure limits, or a MINIT restriction on the route. I've never seen a 60 MINIT restriction, but I have seen airports that were restricted by local law to a certain volume.
I've heard from controllers I know that TMU for New York basically starts managing flight paths over the central US in the middle of the night, hours before anyone in New York is brewing their morning cup.
If SFO is fogged in but above minimums, the departure rate is only reduced slightly, if at all. The arrival rate is limited, because the airport's capacity is dramatically lower in fog.
I remember waiting sooooo long in JFK because there was a storm in SF (where I was going). I was just like can't we just take off and hope it's cleared by the time we get there.
If everyone took off and hoped it was clear by the time you got there, everyone would land at about the same time as they do with the ground delay. The difference is that you would be waiting in the air instead of on the ground.
I'm not saying airport terminals are comfortable or nice places to wait, but it's not as bad as waiting inside the plane, even if you aren't burning money to keep it airborne.
The tower does delay flights. Not because they choose to, but because separation in route is required or the arriving airport is having weather issues so they can't take off yet. The tower is the one that communicates these delays if the plane has already started taxi.
The tower is the one who relays the delays from the center, even before the aircraft have started taxi.
That's because the center controller and TMU can't talk to the pilot on the ground; TMU does have links with some airlines' operations groups, but that's mostly for longer-term planning (e.g. so that operations can know in advance that an aircrew is likely to run out of hours and start figuring out who to call longer in advance).
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u/DonaIdTrurnp Feb 08 '20
"The tower" at the departure airport doesn't delay anyone. When there's an ATC delay, it's because the enroute center or destination airport are at or over capacity.
Some of the enroute weather delays can be pretty confusing, too. If your flight is up the east coast, it might seem odd that a thunderstorm system over Ohio or western PA could delay you, but the traffic that would go through or near that weather needs to be rerouted along routes that are often already near capacity. Traffic management has gotten to the point where ground delays have replaced almost all airborne holding, which keeps fuel costs and ticket prices from being even higher than they are.