[schasko]

My flight was scheduled to fly from Tampa to Atlanta last night. Unfortunately, my flight was cancelled due to weather. I was part of a larger corporate group that was flying back to Atlanta. Our company generally encourages travelling on Delta and I made the mistake of choosing Airtran. All of my coworkers were on flights that were delayed but did leave. Flights that were before and after my Airtran flight. I have become conditioned to airline excuses but find this inexcusable. The gate agents in Tampa were completely flippant about my situation. I needed to be back in Atlanta for personal reasons. My wife is a teacher; school is out; and I was scheduled to be working from home and watching kids. Now, my wife is in tears, my work is delayed, my company has to pay for a hotel. And Airtran appears to have no interest in my business. Does anyone know if there is a federal forum for posting a complaint - it seems odd that Airtran has the ability to claim this is weather related when the other airlines flew?

[The_Judge]

http://airconsumer.dot.gov/problems.htm

[Ombudsman]

Unfortunately complaining to the government will not do much as the government had a part in what happened. When there is weather around an airport the FAA makes the determination to limit the number of aircraft taking off and landing and by how many. You were flying into Delta's main hub. If the FAA decided, for instance, to cut 30% of the traffic into/out of ATL guess which airline is going to get the "loin's share" of the remaining slots?

Now, once the slots are eliminated it then falls to each airline to decide what to do with the remaining slots. I'm guessing AirTran decided to use the slots they had left to allow planes that were already in the air to land. Your Tampa flight being a relatively short distance from Atlanta remained on the ground as they were probably hoping for more landing slots to open up later. That obviously didn't happen so ultimately your flight was cancelled. It's very inconvenient, but it happens. At your first instinct that the Delta flights were getting out while yours was not you should have been on the phone to your travel agent to book one of those flights. Since your AirTran flight was cancelled your company would have received a refund for the unused ticket.

[schasko]

Nice explanation. I first went to the Delta counter which was queued up rather deep with passenger's trying to work out connections due to the flight delay. Next call was to the travel agency who could see all the Delta flights were booked until 2 pm the next day. Given that the airtran flight was not full it seemed like they were blaming weather to keep from flying a near empty plane. But your explanation makes sense. Thanks...

[The_Judge]

So I guess my hard work of finding exactly of what the OP was asking for was all for naught. And the previous poster's (whom has no experience in airline work) response gets kudos from the OP (which baffles me) is fine. I guess I'll just sit back in the shadows and watch the true people that have been there/done that respond.