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Creative Delays
The Travel Critic · March 16, 1998

Ever board a flight that went nowhere? Maybe the plane just rolled out onto the runway and then returned to the gate, or worse still, it never even moved?

Happens all the time. Although neither the Department of Transportation nor the Federal Aviation Administration collect statistics on mechanical delays, experience tells us that roughly 5 percent of all scheduled flights are hampered by some kind of "technical" trouble.

Just look at an airline's delay numbers, discount the weather, and you've got a good idea of the kind of havoc mechanical problems can wreak on a carrier's schedule.

None among us would be in favor of taking off with broken engines or flaps. But is that usually what they're talking about when they tell us our flight has been grounded because of mechanical trouble?

Often it's not. It seems carriers have begun adopting a very generous definition of "mechanical" trouble. When an apologetic flight attendant gets on the PA system and announces that you're stuck because the aircraft is "experiencing mechanical problems," it might be that it's an aircraft other than yours that's, in fact, having trouble. Or the problem might not be the kind that you would think would ground a plane-a clogged toilet, perhaps, or a button that's not illuminating. Airline insiders say carriers have canceled flights for everything from a broken coffeemaker to wet glue under the windshield to rather vague (read nonexistent) "engine irregularities."

"They call it mechanical trouble," says Frank Kogen, president and chief operating officer for corporate travel agency Advanced Travel Management in New York. "But it isn't. Not the way we think of it."

Well then, what is it? It could be a couple of things. According to Paul Hudson, executive director of the Aviation Consumer Action Project, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., "there's an interest in exaggerating mechanical delays, because they're excluded from on-time performance statistics kept by the FAA."

So if a plane is running late, just call it a mechanical delay and it won't go on the airline's record. Heck, cancel the flight-it won't matter.

Airlines routinely ice underbooked flights for "mechanical" reasons and send travelers out on a later flight. What the airline won't tell you is that your plane works just fine. It's another aircraft-perhaps one that's got more passengers on it-that's broken.

"It's a joke," admits an American Airlines crewmember, who will remain nameless so she can keep her job. "We're telling passengers that the flight is canceled because of a mechanical problem, but what we really should be saying is that their plane is needed elsewhere."

If you're still a skeptic, I invite you to check out the "departures" screen on your next layover in Denver or Atlanta. Try this on a day when the weather is quiet and there are few passengers in the terminal. Saturdays and Sundays are best. Now count the number of cancellations and ask yourself: what are the odds of that many flights succumbing to mechanical trouble at the same time?

On a layover in Dallas last week, with the weather clear as a bell, I saw a whole column of cancellations. Unless there's a saboteur at work at DFW, I figured this was prime example of airline cancellation greed.

Which airlines have a lot of dubious cancellations? Charters are the worst, mostly because they only operate a limited number of aircraft. For them, a "mechanical" problem can be something as insignificant as a stopped-up toilet.

Not every airline pulls this stuff. Last year, after one of its flights from New York to London broke down, British Airways offered to re-book the stranded passengers. Only one traveler, who happened to be related to a flight attendant, refused to go. He wasn't in any hurry, he said, and would gladly take the flight once it was fixed. He ended up being the lone passenger on the Boeing 747.

"It was a little embarrassing, to be honest, having only one passenger on that flight," says British Airways spokeswoman Margie Vodopia. Her carrier's rule is simple. It operates the flights whether they're overbooked or underbooked. I like that policy.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.