Advice for pandemic flight cancelations

As we move into the heart of January 2022, Corporate Travel Management (CTM) is seeing more flights cancelations and delays – some due to adverse weather events, but also pandemic-related disruptions.

Advice for your travelers

There are several steps that you and/or your travelers can take to navigate increased flight cancelations and delays in the coming weeks and months. These include:

1) Review your flight’s operational history
At least two days before a flight departs, review the flight’s operational history and consider an alternative flight if the flight has recently been canceled. Look on your online booking tool (such as CTM’s proprietary OBT, Lightning, or the CTM Portal) to refer to the flight number (for example, UA 455 or AA 1123), at least 48 hours before a flight’s departure time.

Next, use a tool like FlightAware to review the operational history of the upcoming flight using the flight number information (here’s an example using UA 455’s recent history). If you see that a flight has been canceled more times than it’s operated over the past several days, consider finding an alternative flight that has demonstrated more operational reliability. Some flights are being canceled almost daily. Spotting those trends will give travelers the best shot of avoiding such disruptions.

2) Show up for your flight on time even if it shows as delayed – schedules can and will change quickly
Even if a flight shows as delayed or the departure airport is advising delays, travelers should show up for their flight on time as schedules can and will change quickly. Since staffing issues can happen with less notice than a weather-related issue, airlines have less time to proactively re-accommodate passengers, meaning that flight schedules can change very close to departure time. However, even if a flight is showing as delayed, delays are frequently shorter than originally expected, so being at the airport on time remains paramount.

CTM is continually evaluating these situations and collaborating with our preferred airline partners for ways to anticipate and improve our ability to service our travelers and clients during these disruptions.