Cancelled flights.

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lownslow
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by lownslow »

So is nobody going to ask the really important question here?

Wjawannabe joined this forum 8.5 years ago. Still wanna be one of those WJA folks?
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aeroncasuperchief
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by aeroncasuperchief »

a hotel room to grab 2 hours sleep
You went with WestJet to save $$$ Why didn't you say to WestJet " Thanks for the room offer, but I will only be able to get 2 hrs sleep and therefore be spending too much of Westjets money for too little gain " Wannabes only think for themselves! ( Unless you are a woman and really need to do your hair ! lol )
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by aerobod »

altiplano wrote: Sun Jan 27, 2019 4:38 am Here's the AC857 stat from flight aware...

average departure delay <:10
average arrival delay :10-:20

seems divergent from what you have...
Each of the 3 major flight tracking sites have their strengths and weaknesses, all have data accuracy in the range of 98% due to missed or corrupt data points Flightstats (which is part of Flight Global) has the best analytics offering, Flightaware the best JSON based realtime connectivity for realtime flight reporting. My Data team met with Flightaware and Flightstats commercial teams a number of times to look at their commercial offerings and how they collect data.

Flightradar24 - almost exclusively uses ADS-B data from enthusiasts with receivers in their homes, fed via the Internet to their servers. great for airport approaches with very accurate view of the flight take off and landing, but weak for runway to terminal times and limited data scrubbing (see the WS2154 squawk 7500 incident caused by flightradar24).

Flightaware - ADS-B plus other publicly available sources such as FAA, ATC. Most accurate for enroute data with some scrubbing capability and predictive paths over oceans where ADS-B is not received via satellite.

Flightstats - Concentrates mainly on airport, airline (GDS) and ATC related information and less on just ADS-B, with the strongest commercial data offering, concentrates mainly on OTP measurement and has good data scrubbing capabilitities. Best for understanding gate-to-gate times

You can go back over the past year in the basic consumer access to the data and do your own analysis. 5 years ago WS was the worst airline for OTP, consistently at the bottom, but had a major internal program to improve. For the the whole of 2018 across all flights captured (about 250,000 WS flights and 600,000 AC flights) the results were:

AC OTP(A14) 68.8% - 31.2% late
AC completion 97.0% - 3.0% cancelled
WS OTP(A14) 77.8% - 22.2% late
WS completion 98.2% - 1.8% cancelled

The basic trends are that AC is at or near the bottom of North American airlines for OTP in most months. WS is below average for winter months and above average in summer months, being number 1 in May 2018. Both have more winter challenges that are responsible for poor OTP than other airlines have to contend with (Hawaiian has the least trouble here and always manages a decent position).

I should also say that I'm hoping to help Air Canada get better even if it is only a small contribution to their performance, I'm currently on an IT Consulting contract there providing assistance in systems architecture. The more accurate data in the hands of the right people at the right time will help operational efficiency, OTP and completion rates.
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altiplano
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by altiplano »

You should tell them to let crews release the park brake on time... that would give them at least a few point bump.
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cloak
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by cloak »

altiplano wrote: Sun Jan 27, 2019 11:47 am You should tell them to let crews release the park brake on time... that would give them at least a few point bump.
What is parking brake release policy as stipulated in the contract at Air Canada?
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altiplano
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by altiplano »

cloak wrote: Sun Jan 27, 2019 12:34 pm
altiplano wrote: Sun Jan 27, 2019 11:47 am You should tell them to let crews release the park brake on time... that would give them at least a few point bump.
What is parking brake release policy as stipulated in the contract at Air Canada?
FOM says not until pushback clearance received.
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cloak
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by cloak »

altiplano wrote: Sun Jan 27, 2019 2:10 pm
cloak wrote: Sun Jan 27, 2019 12:34 pm
altiplano wrote: Sun Jan 27, 2019 11:47 am You should tell them to let crews release the park brake on time... that would give them at least a few point bump.
What is parking brake release policy as stipulated in the contract at Air Canada?
FOM says not until pushback clearance received.
Ok, when can you call for pushback?
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altiplano
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by altiplano »

You can call for push, final load received, door closed, bridge off... but you can't release the brake until you are cleared to push... freq congestion, blocked, traffic, atc delays... late load figures... whatever... all see sked come and go while you're sitting fully ready...
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wjawannabe
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by wjawannabe »

aerobod wrote: Sat Jan 26, 2019 9:24 pm
altiplano wrote: Sat Jan 26, 2019 9:10 pm Stats eh?

Just looking at the past week for WS 4...

1 x into KEF
1 x into YYT
1 x into YHZ
1 x XLD

How many times were BA or AC into KEF this week?

Screenshot_2019-01-26-22-56-06.png
I guess they were on-time doing it though... Do they get an extra on-time departure report for being on-time out of YHZ or YYT? How late were they for the original arrival into YYZ I wonder?
You do realize that was due to the fuel tech stops while the 737MAX-8 is being used, as opposed to diversions?

If you look at the big picture, on a WestJet flight you are more likely to arrive and arrive on time than on an Air Canada flight. I don’t think AC has had better OTP than WestJet for quite a few years. In Dec 2018 WestJet had both better OTP and completion factor (78.46% / 98.98%) compared with AC (69.10% / 98.17%). https://www.flightstats.com/v2/monthly- ... s/airlines

Hmm. Seems like you're the one who needs to look at the big picture. No, tech stops are not diversions but that's irrelevant - it still massively affects downroute connections, as I discovered. Who gives a rat's ass if they're on-time out of LGW if they're arriving a day later than booked on the West Coast?

The simple fact is that the larger airlines have more equipment flexibility in situations when aircraft go u/s. WestJet has had to rely on their old 767's - hopefully soon to change - but trying to defend that with meaningless OTP stats is silly.

As usual, a pointless pissing contest. As I said, everyone has IROPS. Next time I'm going with a company that has more resources to deal with them.

And no, I have zero desire any longer to work for WestJet, have long since moved on to greener pastures and couldn't take the pay cut nor the exponentially mounting bullshit there these days. It's the main reason this waste of time irked me, I can easily afford a proper ticket but mistakenly assumed WS would be capable of doing the job.

Please do get back to arguing the finer points of brake release. Keerist.
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aerobod
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by aerobod »

wjawannabe wrote: Mon Jan 28, 2019 9:51 am
aerobod wrote: Sat Jan 26, 2019 9:24 pm
altiplano wrote: Sat Jan 26, 2019 9:10 pm Stats eh?

Just looking at the past week for WS 4...

1 x into KEF
1 x into YYT
1 x into YHZ
1 x XLD

How many times were BA or AC into KEF this week?

Screenshot_2019-01-26-22-56-06.png
I guess they were on-time doing it though... Do they get an extra on-time departure report for being on-time out of YHZ or YYT? How late were they for the original arrival into YYZ I wonder?
You do realize that was due to the fuel tech stops while the 737MAX-8 is being used, as opposed to diversions?

If you look at the big picture, on a WestJet flight you are more likely to arrive and arrive on time than on an Air Canada flight. I don’t think AC has had better OTP than WestJet for quite a few years. In Dec 2018 WestJet had both better OTP and completion factor (78.46% / 98.98%) compared with AC (69.10% / 98.17%). https://www.flightstats.com/v2/monthly- ... s/airlines

Hmm. Seems like you're the one who needs to look at the big picture. No, tech stops are not diversions but that's irrelevant - it still massively affects downroute connections, as I discovered. Who gives a rat's ass if they're on-time out of LGW if they're arriving a day later than booked on the West Coast?

The simple fact is that the larger airlines have more equipment flexibility in situations when aircraft go u/s. WestJet has had to rely on their old 767's - hopefully soon to change - but trying to defend that with meaningless OTP stats is silly.

As usual, a pointless pissing contest. As I said, everyone has IROPS. Next time I'm going with a company that has more resources to deal with them.

And no, I have zero desire any longer to work for WestJet, have long since moved on to greener pastures and couldn't take the pay cut nor the exponentially mounting bullshit there these days. It's the main reason this waste of time irked me, I can easily afford a proper ticket but mistakenly assumed WS would be capable of doing the job.

Please do get back to arguing the finer points of brake release. Keerist.
I understand you frustration and emotion in having a problem on your flight and it may be better that you don't fly on WS in the future (both for your sake and the company's sake), but the fact remains that on any average WS or AC flight, you have a higher percentage likelihood of a cancellation on AC and are less likely to arrive on time, based on the 250,000 WS flights and 600,000 AC flights in 2018.
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altiplano
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by altiplano »

Your self-generated statistics don't line up with other available data in this instance, and your comparability of entire scope of operations is invalid.

Further, if you can't understand that a flight sold as non-stop departing "on time", tech stopping, and arriving hours late, really isn't on time at all... then I think your koolaid glasses are a little too thick...
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by aerobod »

altiplano wrote: Mon Jan 28, 2019 11:51 am Your self-generated statistics don't line up with other available data in this instance, and your comparability of entire scope of operations is invalid.

Further, if you can't understand that a flight sold as non-stop departing "on time", tech stopping, and arriving hours late, really isn't on time at all... then I think your koolaid glasses are a little too thick...
I'm sorry that you don't understand that the stats I provided are not my stats, they are industry stats from sources that the airlines use and respect, you can go and review them yourself if you have the inclination. Tech stop flights would not be shown as on-time if the original O&D is still in place, if the O&D changes to something not scheduled, then the data point is likely to be scrubbed due to inconsistencies between the different data providers. Even if the tech stop flights were considered "on-time", they are rare enough to not even influence 0.1% of data for either WS or AC flights overall.

You are missing the big picture here, while dwelling on details that have little effect on the overall result of which airline is most likely to cancel a flight or be late across their network.

Also, to corroborate the flighstats.com data showing the WS and AC completion/cancellation and OTP rankings, here is another commercial source that is consistent with it, https://www.oag.com/monthly-on-time-performance
OAG.png
OAG.png (194.11 KiB) Viewed 4516 times
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altiplano
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by altiplano »

You fail to recognise that the OTP performance you state for WS4 is based on brakes off time. Not arrival time, or even left the gate time. While departure +00 is an important metric, it doesn't account that in that sample the aircraft went to YYT, YHZ, and KEF, hardly on-time into YYZ for those folks... you also don't acknowledge that other analysis of actual left the gate and landing times (flightaware) doesn't paint the picture as rosy as you infer. In fact, far the opposite. You also acknowledge multiple cancellations during that period. How was that recovery?

Your greater comparison of an entire operation of a larger, global 6 continent carrier with different logistics, unique challenges, and different recovery options isn't apples to apples either and is off topic from both this thread, and your initial statistical comparison can of worms on a specific route - which you opened.

What are actual arrival times of WS/AC/BA on London-Toronto?
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by aerobod »

altiplano wrote: Mon Jan 28, 2019 1:31 pm You fail to recognise that the OTP performance you state for WS4 is based on brakes off time. Not arrival time, or even left the gate time. While departure +00 is an important metric, it doesn't account that in that sample the aircraft went to YYT, YHZ, and KEF, hardly on-time into YYZ for those folks... you also don't acknowledge that other analysis of actual left the gate and landing times (flightaware) doesn't paint the picture as rosy as you infer. In fact, far the opposite. You also acknowledge multiple cancellations during that period. How was that recovery?

Your greater comparison of an entire operation of a larger, global 6 continent carrier with different logistics, unique challenges, and different recovery options isn't apples to apples either and is off topic from both this thread, and your initial statistical comparison can of worms on a specific route - which you opened.

What are actual arrival times of WS/AC/BA on London-Toronto?
I've previously shown screen shots of the stats for WS/AC/BA on LON-YYZ for 15 Nov to 15 Jan earlier in this thread, the stats for 30 Nov to 31 Jan should be available from flightstats.com (wider date range requires subscription) and through flightaware.com (with subscription) the first week in Feb. A14 is what is measured, based on BRAKES ON at arrival. BRAKES OFF would only be relevant to D0, D5 or D15, not stats that are generally used outside of the airline Ops dept, and not for published OTP.

Yes, I contributed to the thread drift when the OP extended their experience of one route operation over a short period of time and extrapolated to the whole airline being not on time and prone to cancellations, of which the stats don't support that rhetoric.

The data for all airlines for each data source should be handled the same. The fuel tech stop is a red herring for overall airline OTP and cancellation perspective, it has a bearing on the particluar circumstance of WS4 this week, but doesn't have significance in the overall picture of an airline's capability to get PAX to a destination at the scheduled time.

A14 (A15 for some data sources) is measured consistently for all airlines by the same data source. Normally brakes on at arrival based on the OOOI brake pressure signal that is most likely received as a Type B ACARS message via SITA, so should be consistent for all airlines.

If you look at AC vs other Global carriers, it doesn't fare too well. For Dec it was ranked 34th out of 41 "global" carriers (WestJet size wise is mid-pack if it was in that list). If you rank by size for all 354 scheduled airlines reported in the OAG stats in Dec, AC is 8th largest and 115th in OTP, WS is 26th largest and 60th in OTP

WestJet's OTP was as poor if not worse than AC back in Nov 2012 when it was recognised issues had to be dealt with, since then it has improved it's ranking quite a bit, but still has a way to go. I'm hoping AC will be able to do the same with a concerted effort, of which I will have a small influence from the work I'm doing there at the moment.

The funny thing is that before I left WestJet early last year, I was the guest speaker at new employee orientation classes about 3 times a year. One standard question I would have for the class over the previous couple of years was "if you think back 5 years, as a WestJet guest how would you rank WestJet's on-time performance based on top middle or bottom of the class?.... please put up your hand if you thought 'top in North America' (half the room would typically put up their hand), 'middle of the pack' (most of the rest of the room would put up their hands, 'bottom of the pack' (very few hands). Perception was completely out, I would then go on to compare the perception of Mercedes being good quality cars until they weren't 10 or 15 years ago and how they were fighting back and that WestJet OTP was in a similar perception vs reality state.
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wjawannabe
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by wjawannabe »

lol

Your stats are so global as to be meaningless. It's a bit like saying that statistically, flying is safer than driving. Yes, we all know that. But no one chooses to drive or fly based on stats. It IS about perception, and Ignoring the power of perception has led many a company to if not t's demise, its diminishment.

No one cares if airline A has marginally better or worse OTP than airline B. That isn't how ticket purchasing decisions are made by anyone outside of perhaps number-crunching nerds. My decision to no longer use an airline depending for its longhaul sectors on a small, old fleet: ie no spares, lower reliability is based on logic, not emotion, and now backed by personal experience. If I have a choice, I will take the larger, newer fleet. Why would I care what the network stats are when I'm flying a specific sector, not an entire network? My annoyance was for making the mistake in the first place - been in the industry a very long time and I should have known better.

The one emotion I do enjoy is amusement, that you still defend a flight arriving in YYZ at its amended arrival time as counting as an OT arrival - even if it pushes the final destination to arrive a day later than the booked itinerary.

You should work for the government! :lol:

Please feel free to write some long rambling rebuttal that doesn't apply to the comparison at hand, but apologies I won't have time to read it.
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by aerobod »

wjawannabe wrote: Tue Jan 29, 2019 10:36 am lol

Your stats are so global as to be meaningless. It's a bit like saying that statistically, flying is safer than driving. Yes, we all know that. But no one chooses to drive or fly based on stats. It IS about perception, and Ignoring the power of perception has led many a company to if not t's demise, its diminishment.

No one cares if airline A has marginally better or worse OTP than airline B. That isn't how ticket purchasing decisions are made by anyone outside of perhaps number-crunching nerds. My decision to no longer use an airline depending for its longhaul sectors on a small, old fleet: ie no spares, lower reliability is based on logic, not emotion, and now backed by personal experience. If I have a choice, I will take the larger, newer fleet. Why would I care what the network stats are when I'm flying a specific sector, not an entire network? My annoyance was for making the mistake in the first place - been in the industry a very long time and I should have known better.

The one emotion I do enjoy is amusement, that you still defend a flight arriving in YYZ at its amended arrival time as counting as an OT arrival - even if it pushes the final destination to arrive a day later than the booked itinerary.

You should work for the government! :lol:

Please feel free to write some long rambling rebuttal that doesn't apply to the comparison at hand, but apologies I won't have time to read it.
I’m sorry, I won’t bother using logic and facts, sometimes people are just too blind to information. Sometimes customers are not worth having too. Nothing worth rambling on about here to counter emotion. I’m surprised your airline operations knowledge is quite limited if you’ve been in the industry for a long time.
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Diadem
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by Diadem »

Well, I once missed a connection on Air Canada because of the airline, and it took an extra day to get where I was going. It doesn't matter whether every other AC flight has been on time, because my connection was missed and I was inconvenienced!!!!
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eliteair
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by eliteair »

I don't get it. You were aware the airline has a minimal old fleet of 767; which you should know that limits options for recovery. You admitted to being cheap and taking a chance on a connection to save a few bucks. Your run into a mechanical issue that all airlines are faced with and you come on here to complain that you gambled and lost. I understand your frustration, but I don't see a need to post this on a forum. Send an email or letter to WestJet directly.

It seems like a 767 was broken and they decided to send a 737 vs stranding you in London. You act like WestJet purposely broke the plane. WestJet took lots of heat in the media for stranding passengers in London over the past few summers. Looks like this is their fix to avoid the negative publicity.

You're lucky they didn't cancel the flight completely and turn your delay into 60 hours.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4297061/west ... ion-rules/


"Nevertheless, let me post on the internet that I will never fly WestJet again because no other airline will ever delay or cancel my flight."
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wjawannabe
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by wjawannabe »

lol

The defensiveness has no end - pax are "lucky" when flights aren't cancelled. Well, I suppose that's progress, in some people's worlds! Yes, a 29 hour trip is better than a 60 hour one, you've got me there! :lol:

I've met many of the type of aerobod, who truly believe that posting large volumes of data is a proxy for critical thought. You can always identify them by their repeated stating of their superior logic abilities, and the attempts at dismissiveness of statements as "emotional". Always ignoring that data is only as good as its analysis. Any monkey can post charts. Perhaps aerobod will one day actually learn to PARSE data, and break out the stats for dispatch reliability for the relevant sectors Europe-North America. OTP is largely irrelevant when you simply change the target times.

Aside from the (I think, understandable) initial exhaustion and frustration of having to deal with the issue, there is no emotion involved. My decision to fly WestJet initially, and now not to not use WestJet ever again were and are both coldly rational. I chose the lower fare to spend less for what I perceived as the same product as offered by other major carriers. Doing otherwise would have been illogical from a cost perspective. But my decision was based on an incorrect premise: that WestJet would provide similar recovery resources in the event of IROPS. I admit I was unaware of the distance WestJet still has to go to be on par with its rivals. In your words, I was not as aware of the extent to which I was as you say, "gambling".

Hence my posting the experience on "the internet", to allow others to make a more informed decision and not repeat my error. Emailing WestJet does not work to that goal.

Hope that helps you "get it", eliteair. I'm here to help! :mrgreen:
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Diadem
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Re: Cancelled flights.

Post by Diadem »

Statistics are important, because if it was a one-off anomaly, or even just less frequent than disruptions on competitors on the same route then it really doesn't say anything about the quality of WestJet's service. AC usually just cancels flights outright and gives the pax vouchers to get them to the next day, and then they have to hope there's enough capacity to get on the next available flight; that's not a rare occurrence either, and I can tell you from personal experience that AC won't make any attempt to help you beyond putting you on standby and leaving you hope you make it. In this case, and another personal experience I had with WS, they tried to find a workaround to get everyone home, even if it was a bit late. If you had booked with AC, they probably would have left you to sit in London for another 24 hours before you could have even attempted to catch another flight, and it would have taken longer than hopping around on WS.
Of course, none of that matters, because it's irrelevant how many times WestJet got everyone else to their destinations on time; they personally inconvenienced you once, and therefore they aren't reliable. You're a special snowflake, and you can disregard every statistic you want, because you, personally, were slighted. :roll:
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