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Is this considered a weather related delay? Are you entitled to any compensation from Southwest?
A plane is doing this route: MCO-RDU-MDW. The flight is delayed from MCO to RDU because of weather. You are flying from RDU to MDW where the weather is bright and sunny.
When you approach the airline for rebooking, have your preferred rebooking option planned out and ask them to put you on that flight, even if it's a different fare class than your original ticket.
It doesn't matter which end of the flight has the bad weather.
What happens if a plane is making this trek: MCO (at 6am)-RDU-MDW-SFO and someone has booked the MDW-SFO flight, yet there is a weather delay at 6am in Orlando? Would the airline really keep using that same plane and make all of the following flights delayed, or would they find another plane?
What happens if a plane is making this trek: MCO (at 6am)-RDU-MDW-SFO and someone has booked the MDW-SFO flight, yet there is a weather delay at 6am in Orlando? Would the airline really keep using that same plane and make all of the following flights delayed, or would they find another plane?
Yes.
Finding another plane isn't as easy as pulling one out of a parking lot somewhere.
You are not entitled for compensation for weather related events. Even if you where (the plane had a mechanical malfunction and you arrive 6 hours later) your compensation is limited and subject to the rules of the airline. For a 6 hour delay you will be lucky if you get some coupon for a free meal. If it's overnight you should get put up at a hotel and some meals, nothing more. Lose that million dollar deal because you couldn't make the meeting? - too bad.
Not sure what you are looking for, but every traveler knows delays are a fact of life while traveling by air. Come to expect it and anticipate it and your life will be happier.
Finding another plane isn't as easy as pulling one out of a parking lot somewhere.
A plane that is not in the air is a plane that is costing the airline money, so all the airlines do their best to minimize the amount of time a plane spends on the ground. The airline operations office does explore plane swaps when it looks like there will be a significant delay to see if there's a better scenario to keep the largest number of flights on track- with Southwest, it's rather easy because all their pilots are 737 pilots, and all their planes are 737s- but the best scenario is often to just let the delay be a delay.
I've been on the good side of a plane swap in Atlanta- it was a 9:00pm flight and the mechanical delay was going to be something like 2 hours- so the gate agent gathered us all up and we followed her like duckings to the gate for what was supposed to be the plane for the 5:30am flight to Biloxi the following morning. If it had been the middle of the day, we would have waited out the delay on the original plane, even though it was Delta's main hub, because- nothing sitting in the parking lot there that time of day.
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