HOWTO Find out why your flight is REALLY delayed

Here's a great tip from Consumerist: airlines' cargo-tracking websites often give the real explanation for flight delays on their passenger jets. The next time your flight gets delayed, try looking up the story on the airline's cargo site and see if the problem is the airline's fault (mechanical failures and so on), and then use that as evidence to get refunds/miles/tickets out of the airline.

It can be hard to get a straight answer out of airlines sometime about the real reason a flight is delayed. For some reason, though, they're more straight up about their packages than their passengers. See, the airlines have special cargo websites which are supposed to be for people tracking packages they're shipping through the airline. Here's the cargo sites for some of the major carriers...

AmericanAirlines
Continental
Delta
NWA
Southwest
United
USAirways

Link

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Robert

Neither USAirways nor Delta seem to have a flight tracker in their cargo section.
Matthew Miller

And Delta — reasonably enough — wants the routing number of a package, not a flight number.
itravelgeek

well, it does not matter what the story is, the airline will always blame it on something else not to make it look like it’s their fault. If they say it’s mechanical than they would have to pay for the hotel stay if the passenger is left at the airport overnight due to their fault.