Gambling on Flight Delays & Cancellations

I recently stumbled across a potential travel hack, but I can’t remember the exact the details or source. I liked the idea of it and wanted to record it down before I forget. Hopefully, someone else can take this information and build off it.

Certain airlines will release their flying schedule for the year in advanced, and they will not make adjustments until later into the year when they have collected some data. Because of this, it is possible to game the system and intentionally book flights that will get delayed or cancelled.

One use case is if you know you’re going to travel around a certain date, but that date’s price is very high. You can intentionally book a flight that will likely delay or cancel on a different date for a presumably cheaper price, and when the flight cancels, you should be offered to change your flight for free, or even offered compensation.

There is risk to this, and finding a data provider for flight data has proven to be difficult. Without a reliable data provider, there’s no point in this.