Airline staff don’t always have all the information when they tell you the reason for a flight delay or cancellation. In the absence of details, they can blame the “weather” as this is a situation that the airline cannot control and therefore is not normally responsible for. But, if you suspect other causes for the delay or cancellation, you may be able to use ExpertFlyer to understand the real reason.
And the real reason can make a significant difference. For example, the American Airlines Customer Service Plan states:
“If the delay or cancellation is due to events beyond our control (such as weather), you are responsible for your own accommodation, meals and incidental expenses.”
However, if the delay or cancellation is due to factors the airline can control (such as crew or aircraft availability), it’s a completely different story.
Each airline has different policies, and some countries also have regulations that protect travelers (such as UE261). You can also have travel insurance or a credit card with travel delay protection.
So now that you know why you might need to know what caused a delay or cancellation, here’s how you can use ExpertFlyer to get this information.
What is ExpertFlyer?
Before we delve into how to use ExpertFlyer to view the reasons for a flight cancellation or delay, let’s briefly discuss the ExpertFlyer product itself. ExpertFlyer is a product that many advanced travelers and travel agents use to search for awards and upgrades, check flight availability, and view fare information.
ExpertFlyer offers a free tier that is primarily useful for using ExpertFlyer alerts to ensure a better seat. There’s also a Basic tier that costs $4.99 per month (or $49.99 per year) that lets you set up four alerts at once. It also allows you to search for rewards and upgrades one date at a time (up to 250 queries per month).
However, the true power and usefulness of ExpertFlyer comes from its Premium tier. This tier costs $9.99 per month (or $99.99 per year) but offers 200 alerts at a time (including aircraft change alerts and time change alerts). Additionally, it offers the ability to search for rewards and upgrades in one-week intervals (with unlimited queries) and access to all available published fare prices.
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You will need an ExpertFlyer Premium membership to see the reason for a flight delay or cancellation. However, you can sign up for a five-day free trial for Premium when register on ExpertFlyerso you can use it for a short period of time in order to search for information about problems with your flight.
Related: Beginner’s Guide to Finding Award Spaces with ExpertFlyer
How to use ExpertFlyer to see the reason for a flight delay or cancellation
Once you have a Premium ExpertFlyer account, you can use it to see the reason for a recent flight delay or cancellation. To see if ExpertFlyer can see why your flight was delayed or cancelled, log in and click “Flight Status” in the left navigation menu.
Enter the date, select the airline after entering your code and enter the flight number.
Once you click “Search”, a page with flight information will load.
Click “View Additional Feedback” and then you can see the reason for the delay or cancellation.
In the case of AA167 on December 8, the delay was due to an aircraft equipment change that same day that affected this flight. Therefore, you could use this information if you needed to prove that the delay was under the airline’s control and was not due to weather or other factors. If you find the additional comments difficult to understand, you may want to use a large language model, such as ChatGPT, to help decode the text.
Why ExpertFlyer might not show the reason for your flight delay or cancellation
Unfortunately, ExpertFlyer cannot provide detailed information on the flight status of all airlines. And the explanations provided by some airlines will be less detailed than those provided by American Airlines in the example above. In short, ExpertFlyer will only show useful flight status comments if your airline posts operational comments and delay codes to the Global Distribution System feed that ExpertFlyer can read.
You can usually use ExpertFlyer to find the reason for a delay or cancellation on an American Airlines or Alaska Airlines flight, but not on budget airlines or Delta Air Lines. The delay and cancellation reasons you can find through ExpertFlyer for United flights are inconsistent, but sometimes helpful. However, if you are on an international airline that uses Amadeus for its airport operations (such as British Airways), you will probably be able to see the reason for the delay or cancellation.
Finally, you can only get flight status information through ExpertFlyer for flights from the last seven days and the next three days. But the information may not be available for flights operated by some airlines if you wait more than a day or so. Therefore, if you experience a flight delay or cancellation, it makes sense to immediately check the reason on ExpertFlyer and take a screenshot, even if you don’t expect to need it.
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