Late flights

Some flights always seem to be late.

Why? And how can you tell your flight will be late? Maybe you can't tell in advance, but certainly on the "day of" you should be ready and armed with knowledge.

Two days ago I was flying SFO-YVR on a United 737 at 12:45pm. Earlier that morning I noticed that there was a noon 737 from EUG (Eugene) due into the gate I was leaving from. So that's my plane. It gets into Eugene from SFO. So now if it leaves for Eugene from SFO at 8:23am as scheduled so far so good, but if it leaves late, where will it pick up the lost time?

So, using sites like http://www.flightstats.com/ you can figure these things out and be a little more ready for the bad news before the airline decides to clue you in that you'll be sitting at the gate for a few extra hours...

So now it's two days later and I have a 3:44 flight from Vancouver back to SFO. Guess what? It's the very same plane and it was already an hour late getting to Eugene this morning. So am I surprised when I got a page a few hours after I saw that saying _my_ departure was also an hour late? Nope.