I’ve noticed that airports in the US such as EWR, JFK, LGA, SFO, ORD, DFW, ATL, BOS, SEA, etc are regularly in ground delay programs when bad weather hits.
I don’t really seem to see or hear about this happening elsewhere in the world. Does it just not happen? And why? Is it just better weather, or do other parts of the world generally have better ATC, more efficient runway configurations, less congestion, or something else that helps them avoid these delays?
Moderators: richierich, ua900, PanAm_DC10, hOMSaR
Re: Ground Delay Programs (GDPs) outside the US
Airports such as LHR and AMS use pre-emptive cancellations instead. If severe weather conditions are forecast, airlines are instructed to cancel a percentage of flights to reduce the demand for airport capacity down to what is expected to be available. That said, Europe has less severe weather than the US does, and slot controls are applied rigorously at congested airports.
Re: Ground Delay Programs (GDPs) outside the US
It essentially happens everywhere. Just in the U.S the program is more visible due to things like public websites etc.
Eurocontrol has its central flow management control that manages traffic across the network and deals with individual airport and enroute challenges, while other places call it things like "metering".
Some nations are better than others. Some like China you'll just sit on the ramp for hours burning fuel without much information.
Eurocontrol has its central flow management control that manages traffic across the network and deals with individual airport and enroute challenges, while other places call it things like "metering".
Some nations are better than others. Some like China you'll just sit on the ramp for hours burning fuel without much information.
I fly your boxes
Re: Ground Delay Programs (GDPs) outside the US
Canada also has GDPs and you can see them occasionally listed on the FAAs website (https://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/). It's only somewhat frequent at YYZ because of the volume they handle.
Edit: This is Nav Canada's OIS website, similar to the FAA's. It lists what the major airports AAR is for that moment in time.
https://extranetapps.navcanada.ca/ois/ois.aspx
Edit: This is Nav Canada's OIS website, similar to the FAA's. It lists what the major airports AAR is for that moment in time.
https://extranetapps.navcanada.ca/ois/ois.aspx
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Re: Ground Delay Programs (GDPs) outside the US
UALifer wrote:I’ve noticed that airports in the US such as EWR, JFK, LGA, SFO, ORD, DFW, ATL, BOS, SEA, etc are regularly in ground delay programs when bad weather hits.
I don’t really seem to see or hear about this happening elsewhere in the world. Does it just not happen? And why? Is it just better weather, or do other parts of the world generally have better ATC, more efficient runway configurations, less congestion, or something else that helps them avoid these delays?
They have delay programs in Europe too. I just don't think they publish them to the public. On my last trip through CDG with heavy fog, I have to wonder if they even publish them for the carriers. AF flight into CDG boarded and then sat at the gate for 1+ hrs before we departed. Then leaving CDG (AF again), we boarded on-time and had to sit at the gate for 1.5hrs for departure metering due to fog. (Then they put us nose-nose with another airplane on the same taxiway, so a pushback had to come and push us back, wasted another 45 minutes, good times).
Seems to me if you knew you were going to have an hour or more of delay, you wouldn't board the pax so early... Perhaps that's just a cultural difference, but US airlines usually don't board if they know they have a significant delay (i.e. an hour or more).
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