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Comment by preinheimer | Hacker News Reader

I think there's another side to this. There's weather, and there's "It's winter".

I don't think it's reasonable for airlines to expect to maintain the same number of departures that worked in the nice summer months through the winter. Runways will need to be cleared, planes will need to be de-iced.

They could keep extra planes and staff around ready to replace an incoming flight if it's delayed (clearly easier for carriers with fewer types of aircraft). Heck just staff seem like they would be handy as the flight crew hit their service limits.

But there's no financial incentive to do that if "weather" (despite happening every winter) is a get-out-of-jail-free card.

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There’s already an incentive with the weather. If have the plane has to be rebooked or refunded that’s lost revenue that stills ends up affecting the bottom line.

The airline is still very incentivized to get you were you are going on time. Planes and crews still need to get where they were going so it’s much better for everyone involved if it’s a full plane with an on time arrival for passengers.

> I don't think it's reasonable for airlines to expect to maintain the same number of departures that worked in the nice summer months through the winter. Runways will need to be cleared, planes will need to be de-iced.

Exceptional/unexpected weather is one thing. But the concept of winter isn't exceptional. Deicing and snow clearing is a known factor. In Tampa that's an exceptional thing, in Helsinki it's not.

The thing with this regulation (and the EU one) is that airlines can't just compete on running with minimal margins and skeleton crews every days, where a single unscheduled repair or sick crewmember sends ripples of delays through the system. For travellers to have any security there needs to be some sort of slack in the system. A spare crew, or a spare plane. So how do you make that not a catastrophic market disadvantage? Like this. By making airlines economically responsible for delays.

    > They could keep extra planes and staff around ready to replace an incoming flight if it's delayed

This seems unrealistic. The cost would be prohibitive.

This was the norm a few decades ago. Spare pilots and other aircrew at all airports, even spare aircraft at large hubs.

Compare ticket costs a few decades ago to now.

> I don't think it's reasonable for airlines to expect to maintain the same number of departures that worked in the nice summer months through the winter.

Agree. So they don’t sell tickets for those flights that don’t run, then there’s nothing to compensate.

Operate fewer flights if they are going to struggle to operate the ones they sell tickets for.

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