Flight cancelled 12 hours prior due to crew issues - what?

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Flyfish1

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I'm supposed to be on a plane right now on my way to Montana to meet a friend and go fishing for a few days. 12 hours prior to the flight American cancels the flight, and has no rebooking options available except for the next day. The reason given was "the crew is no longer available to operate the flight". That's a new one. I've had mechanical problems, prior flight delayed due to weather, etc.. What does this mean, someone has Covid, the crew called out sick, or is this some lame excuse to say this flight will not be profitable due to few passengers and we are cancelling it? Leaving from a small airport PVD and there were no other options to get to my destination even if I paid out of pocket for a new ticket on a different airline.
I had to book the same flight for tomorrow. Probably the same crew- so we shall see if they cancel this next flight as well.
 
Hate to miss a day of fishing... hope to fling feathers in Montana some day
 
jazz4cash said:
Don't crews run out of hours if they are on duty for extra time due to weather or traffic delays?
Click to expand...
Right. Regulations require a minimum time off between shifts, and flights delays impact that. The airline has to rebook and most have agreed to pay for out of pocket delay costs, such as hotel and food.
 
Yeah most likely some delays occurred earlier in the day meaning that crew would exceed their mandatory safe hours if they completed your flight, and AA was unable to restaff? Still, odd that would be known 12 hours in advance.

And since the OP maybe wasn't flying out of a major hub where it's probably easier to assemble a crew on short notice, the airline didn't have any options.
 
That makes sense - but it still seems a bit odd that it was 12 hrs in advance and they could not restaff.
 
Airlines run that lean. If their crews are out of hours, and/or a reserve crew is already filling in on a more popular leg, they have to cancel flights.
 
Fingers crossed that I can fly out tomorrow, but then I have to make it back....or I stay in Montana! Ha!
 
It’s probably the control freak in me, but this is why I loathe air travel. You’re left feeling helpless at times.

Enjoy the trip! Starting in Jackson, WY up to the Canadian border is majestic land!
 
Flyfish1 said:
I'm supposed to be on a plane right now on my way to Montana to meet a friend and go fishing for a few days. 12 hours prior to the flight American cancels the flight, and has no rebooking options available except for the next day. The reason given was "the crew is no longer available to operate the flight". That's a new one. I've had mechanical problems, prior flight delayed due to weather, etc.. What does this mean, someone has Covid, the crew called out sick, or is this some lame excuse to say this flight will not be profitable due to few passengers and we are cancelling it? Leaving from a small airport PVD and there were no other options to get to my destination even if I paid out of pocket for a new ticket on a different airline.
I had to book the same flight for tomorrow. Probably the same crew- so we shall see if they cancel this next flight as well.
Click to expand...

I would take the airline at face value; they don't have anything to gain from lying.

Others have already mentioned the crew timing out due to previous flight delays. But yes, if a required crewmember is sick, they should call out, and if the airline doesn't have a backup crew or crewmember that they can get there in time, then the flight can't go.

I do wonder how the airlines manage it all. They must have some extra planes and crews on hand, but not too many. Normally they make it work, but sometimes, as in your case, they can't.

I don't think the airlines think in terms of a flight being profitable or not; I think they look at the route (i.e. the same flight over the course of months, not just a single day).

Good luck!
 
We had a flight cancelled when we were returning from Greece a few years ago. The reason was crew hours. The airline put us up in a nice hotel and we had food vouchers. Ah, the joys of retirement. We relaxed and enjoyed the extra day. The flight was not cancelled until after we got to the airport, certainly not 12 hours in advance. We were fine with the extra day, but there were people on our flight who were pretty upset.
 
Being that the flight was from a small airport is the likely reason it happened so far in advance. In the larger airports, they can often juggle the crew enough to cover things when some crew are ruled unable to fly. In the major airports, they even have crew sitting around waiting for such things to happen or can be called into work on a couple hours notice. In a small city, there probably isn't even any local crew to help out.
 
PaunchyPirate said:
Being that the flight was from a small airport is the likely reason it happened so far in advance. In the larger airports, they can often juggle the crew enough to cover things when some crew are ruled unable to fly. In the major airports, they even have crew sitting around waiting for such things to happen or can be called into work on a couple hours notice. In a small city, there probably isn't even any local crew to help out.
Click to expand...
I feel like at this point in life I could absolutely step in and help out - C'mon we could all do the safety demonstration thing and pour coffee. But they didn't even ask me....just saying they should have asked...
 
More to it than this, but in general:
Providence isn’t a crew base for AA. Pilots that are “on-call” are required to be within 2 hours of reporting to their crew base.
So there are no on-call pilots at KPVD. AA has to identify pilots in the system, pay them a premium, and get them there. In those scenarios, less than 12 hours is tough…and it ripple affects other flights. Especially during high volume flying, like a weekend with World Cup going.

Or, they reset that crew. Crew day reset…12 hours.

So my guess, 12 hours is pretty indicative that they had to reset that crew.
 
The airline lost money several times on that cancellation. First, your cancelled flight cost them money not only in passenger revenue, but cargo revenue. Secondly, they lost money on the second leg of that flight for the same reason. It will snowball until there is plane and crew available if a short turnaroud interval occurs, or a plane that is coming off of a maintence check or repair, is now available. My father was with a major airline for 45 years.
 
Mechanical, work limits on crew, illness, hangovers and many other things. Happened recently to my daughter coming back from Spain to USA except she had 4 hour notice. Crew illness was the excuse. As she said,
better a new flight and crew vs flying with Hantavirus !
 
You're lucky they were honest with you. I once had a flight cancelled because the plane had some mechanical issue. The airline waited hours until a brief rainstorm passed over and announced it was cancelled because of weather. I'd already spoken to one of the crew and knew the real story. Apparently they don't have to compensate you if they cancel for weather instead of mechanical issues.
 
This won't help the OP, but may help others in a similar situation in the future. I used to live near a similar small airport with few options. When flights were cancelled we had to wait, and wait, or drive 2.5 hrs to the big airport to either meet our original connection or get on a different flight. We either rented a car and returned it at the bigger airport so we could fly back to our hometown airport, or decided to drive both ways and parked at the big airport. Today Uber is an option. PVD to BOS also has a train option.

OP had the option of re-routing and flying out of BOS, assuming space was available. The agent at PVD could find this out, but one usually has to ask for all options. BOS, as an AA hub, would have multiple options. While they may not have gotten him to Montana at the exact same time, the delay would certainly have been less than 24hrs and perhaps only a half-day of fishing would have been lost.
 
Welcome to Montana!!! I hope you update on your trip and see some fishing results.
 
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