Anyone have any idea why Southwest LAX/LAS flights are so delayed

Can someone help find some info as I am scrambling to find some backup options

(this post was specific to the 8pm April 10th flight which was delayed over 2 hours)

 

There is a 920 pm on JetBlue

 

Probably because unless you take the first flight of the day, your plane has been all over the place that day and every takeoff and landing along the way is subject to a delay.

For example, there's a 2:50pm non-stop LAX -> LAS which is that aircraft's 3rd flight of the day.



Southwest does really tight turnarounds which leaves little room for error or conditions out of its control. And they don't do any long haul flights. Whereas if you are flying JetBlue from BOS, you're most likely going to be on a plane that just goes back and forth to the west coast, only does 3 legs the entire day, and if you take the first flight in the morning, your plane got in the night before.

LAS also has been having a lot of problems with wind the last month or so which can cause ground stops meaning your plane sits at LAX until conditions improve.

 

We have had flights that have originated from SoCal (not necessarily LAX) that have been delayed for various reasons. Kinda annoying.

 

The crew and plane could also be different. So even if the plane gets there the crew could be on a different delayed flight. Although LAS is a southwest base so they could swap out crew.

 

VDT - why not book two cancelable flights home each time and cancel the second one as your board the first one? You travel often enough that having a flight credit you can use again on Southwest, Delta, United, American, whatever isn't a big deal, and it will be cheaper than trying to book a backup last minute

You'll need to read up on each airline's cancel policy

 

I’ve noticed that Frontier tends to do more out and backs, whereas Southwest will go all over the place to maximize direct (stay on the plane) flights. I haven’t seen too many flying bus style itineraries where you could buy a ticket for a three stop flight and not have to transfer or get off the plane, but they still have many one and two stop itineraries.

 

that is overly hedging my bets

usually just rebooking SWA's flight for free works fine

 

I took this flight last night
Delayed over 2 hours

 

Looks like the other nonstop flights left close to on time yesterday.

Most likely there was an equipment issue at some point and your flight was the one affected.

 

Yesterday, that plane went
BWI -> BNA
BNA -> PHX
PHX -> ONT
ONT -> OAK
OAK -> LAS arrived at gate at LAS at 7:11pm
LAS -> LAX departed LAS 10:13pm

All those flights were on time except the departure from LAS. So whatever the holdup was, it happened in Vegas, and it wasn't due to the plane arriving in LAS late.

 

Southwest doesnt have hubs. If a plane goes down they cant just fly another in from the hub. So they end up cancelling a lot more than some airlines. Then there is a chain reaction because that flight was supposed to be somewhere else in a few hours. That flight is then affected and more so one plane going down could affect flights for a day or two until an extra one can be freed up somewhere.

 

Flew SWA yesterday, our original flight was delayed because our plane coming in from Tampa was weather delayed, so they found another plane coming in from Hawaii for us and boarded us and then they found that the deferred maintenance on the cockpit door lock needed more work than the Hawaii crew said needed to be done and we sat at the gate for 90 minutes. We finally landed in Pittsburgh at 1:30 am today. We would have gotten home earlier if they had just used the original plane.

 

I always take the first flight of the day because of that.

 

if you do this on the same airline 1 of the flights will likely be canceled. You could do it with 2 different airlines.

 

yes, was not saying book two with the same airline