Once again, just like that, winter is once again here. Temperatures have dropped, snow is falling, and suddenly, airline travel has become significantly worse. Winter brings all sorts of disruptions to airline travel plans. With winter come longer airline delays, cancelations, and missed flights. Everything related to airline travel seems to take longer in winter.
Just thing about the boarding process. Now, everyone in their big winter coats have to find their seat, put their luggage away, and then take off their coat. They’ll also usually try to store that coat in the overhead bin only to be told off by a flight attendant. All of those coats alone significantly slows the boarding and deplaning process. Next you have deicing. When flying in winter months, the ground crew usually have to de-ice planes. The de-icing process then adds several minutes to every departing flight. Likewise, snow or ice in the area usually mean airports slow the rate at which planes can depart and arrive.
All of these factors combined mean that when winter weather hits, there is a much larger chance that an airline will delay or cancel your flight. This can lead to a rolling effect that could cause you to miss out on your trip entirely.
How To Avoid A Canceled Flight?
So, there really isn’t a guaranteed way to avoid a canceled flight. However, I’ve found that you can avoid a canceled flight if you’re careful with the flights you book.
My first trick for avoiding a canceled flight is to try to book the early morning flight out. By booking the first flight of the day there is a good chance that the aircraft is ready and waiting at the departure airport from the night before. Also, because the flight departs early in the morning, the airline needs that aircraft operating the flight somewhere else later in the day. This means that even a slight delay could impact the entire day’s schedule. Because of this, airlines will often try to ensure the first flight of the day is on-time.
Ok, that was an easy one. The second trick, and the more important one, is to book flights based on the aircraft operating the flight. See, in bad weather with limited departures and arrivals in and out of an airport, an airline will have to reduce flight frequencies. In those cases, which flights are they going to cancel? The flight with 50 people on a regional jet or the flight with 400 people on a wide-body.
So, when booking flights, I always try to book the largest aircraft possible. I do this because the airline is more encourage to get the larger number of people to where they need to go. The other advantage of larger planes is that the larger aircraft are often destined for somewhere much further away later in the day. It’s that long-haul flight later in the day that airlines can’t afford to cancel.
A Recent Success Story
The Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend my Girlfriend and I had to fly back to New York from Chicago. When we looked to book our flight from Chicago O’Hare to Newark we had several options to choose from. In fact, there were flights on several airlines departing about every half-hour. As we combed through the schedule we found an early evening flight on a United 777. Without hesitation we selected that flight with this trick in mind.
In the days leading up to Sunday all we heard about was the weather. Every news outlet continued to highlight the bad weekend weather that would cause significant travel disruptions. As Sunday approached it became clear that weather was going to be an issue and we became slightly nervous about our chances of getting back to New York. The day of our flight, as we checked the schedule, we noticed several delayed and canceled flights. However, our flight, on a Boeing 777, was still on-time.
As we looked at all the other flights schedule between Chicago and Newark on the Sunday following Thanksgiving just two were on-time. Those two flights were both operated by United’s 777-200 aircraft.
Sure enough, our flight departed right on-time, but we had a brief hold in the penalty box at O’hare. Before long however, we were in the air and on our way to Newark. In the end, we only arrived about 30 minutes late which was a miracle given most flights experienced delays of several hours.
Why Does This Work?
I mentioned this above, but as airport operations slow, airlines are only permitted to “slot” so many flights into an airport at a time. So, if United schedules 10 flights to arrive an hour, when things slow, they might only get 5 flights an hour. I’m not exactly sure how this process is handled or who get’s priority, but that’s the basic premise.
So, when United flight operations is decided which flights to send in those slots it has to prioritize the most important flights. In our case, United opted to send the much larger 777-200 with several hundred passengers to Newark rather than the much smaller 737-800 or even the slightly smaller 767-300.
That’s only half the story though. The other half of the story is where the aircraft goes after completing the flight. In our case, the 772 that took us to Newark then left a few hours later for Beijing. That’s an even more important flight. Missing that flight could disrupt several days of long-haul international travel worth much more to an airline than a simple domestic flight. Additionally, international long-haul flights also carry several tons of cargo. In some cases, cargo accounts for 10-40% of the total revenue earned on a flight. So, while getting all of us to Newark was important, it was even more important to get the plane to Beijing and back in a timely manner.
How To Book A Flight Based On The Aircraft
To my knowledge, there isn’t a tool that you can use to book flights based on the aircraft type alone. Instead, when booking airfare I always start with Google Flights which clearly lists the aircraft type when selecting flights.
When you view flight options on Google Flights there is an option to see more information. Clicking that expand button (highlighted) will show you more information about the flight.
In this example, there are two flights between Newark and San Francisco within an hour of each other for the same price. However, the 6:00PM departure is operated by a new Boeing 787 while the 7:00PM departure is on an older 757.
In this case, I’d always choose the 787 option because I prefer the aircraft, but also because chances are that it will continue onto some other destination far away after landing at SFO.
Final Thoughts
This is a very nice little travel trick that is very easy to understand. However, when I shared this tip with a few friends and colleagues, almost everyone commented that they had never thought of this before. For that reason, I thought it was be a good idea to share this as it will absolutely come in handy the next time you are booking travel during the winter months.
Now, it’s worth noting that often flights on larger aircraft are often more expensive than smaller planes. Likewise, upgrades on larger planes may seem like a better bet, but often these flights attract frequent fliers hoping to score a lie-flat bed on a flight that normally only offers a recliner seat.
That being said, I’ve been saved by this trick a few times and will continue booking larger planes when I can. Just remember, if you book a larger plane, make sure to get to the airport early. You might think because everything else is delayed this one will be too, but that could cause you to miss your flight. If that’s the case, you might be spending the night in the airport!
