I've known of flight delays or cancellations for all kinds of odd reasons, not just weather.
- Mechanical delays of anywhere from 30 minutes upwards to cancelled flights after waiting a couple of hours on delay.
- Airplane delayed arriving from prior destination. Unless your equipment is housed at your airport the night before and you are first flight out, it has to come from somewhere.
- Flight crew rest restrictions. If their last flight the night prior was late arriving, they have to be given X hours "off" before they can be on duty again.
- Delayed waiting for flight crew coming off a different flight.
- Delayed nearly an hour waiting on another flight which had a large number of connecting passengers booked on our flight.
- Delay (and eventual cancellation) due to bizarre incident at another airport that closed down all flights in/out therefore impacting any other flights that used those same planes -- somebody drove a vehicle onto the runway or something!
- Weather in another part of the country delaying/cancelling flights.
So as someone else indicated -- it's all about the risk level and stress level you personally are willing to tolerate. Hundreds of people fly in same day without problem. But always have a back-up plan if you opt for that. I think there are way more flight delays and cancellations in today's world than occurred even a couple of decades ago; many more people flying, many more planes, more chances of issues.
Enjoy your cruise!
I've experienced flight delays for all the reasons lanejudy listed with the exception of the "bizarre incident". When flying down for our cruise last June, we flew down the night before and we had so many delays, I started to get nervous that we might not get there in time for the cruise. Our flight was first delayed due to a delay in the flight before ours getting to the airport. I'm not sure what caused that part of the delay, but it was either weather or a mechanical issue. That delay was almost an hour. Then once the plane got there and unloaded, they delayed us again due to a horrendous lightening storm in Orlando. MCO shut down to incoming flights for a time period, first due to the weather, then due to the backup of planes. When there is lightening, they can't have the ground crews out unloading baggage from the planes. So even though the passengers had debarked from the plane, their luggage was stuck on there. They had to wait for the storm to pass, unload all the planes already at gates, get them reloaded and on their way, then let planes that had landed but had no open gates available to unload and reload. They wouldn't let our flight even take off until MCO reopened to incoming flights. All told, we were delayed almost 5 hours. I believe our saving grace was that the flight crew scheduled for our flight was fresh off of a rest period. If we had been scheduled with the flight crew from the prior flight, they almost certainly wouldn't have been able to fly due to the restrictions on hours they are allowed to be on duty.
And once we got to MCO, it was a mess. Baggage had been delayed for so long that many people had gone ahead to their hotels and left their bags. I'm not sure if the airlines were making accommodations to deliver bags to hotels, or if the people had intentions of returning to MCO to pick up their luggage. But there was luggage stacked everywhere. Traffic into and out of the airport was backed up. Our hotel offered a free shuttle but when we called for the shuttle, they told us to take a cab because it would take over an hour for their shuttle to make it through all the traffic, and the hotel is less than a 10 minute drive from the airport in normal conditions. We went out to the taxi stand and found a huge line of people and no taxis. The taxis were having trouble making it through the traffic to pick up passengers. I expected us to be at our hotel by 7:30pm. Because of the flight delays and then ground transportation back ups, it was after 1:00am before we got to the hotel.
If a flight due to land at 10:00am gets delayed 5 hours, you would be very likely to miss the cruise as it is about an hours drive from MCO to the port and all aboard is 3:45pm.
All that said, are there people who have flown in the morning of and had no issues? Definitely! But are there a variety of reasons which could delay you and make you miss the cruise? Definitely! I'd rather not start my trip with stress about getting there in time.
Many people do it and are fine with it, but there is no way I could do it now without having a breakdown in the days leading up to it. I've seen and dealt with so many delays that flying the day before still gets me nervous.
. Even if the flight does land on time, there is always a chance your luggage will go elsewhere. Save yourself the stress and possible considerable trouble and just come in a day ahead.
