Last week I was flying down from Auckland to Wellington and when I checked in the lady at the counter said "I believe they are going to announce a delay on that flight due to the late arrival of the incoming aircraft".

Sure enough, 5 minutes later we were told our flight would be delayed "about 20 minutes".

I'm pretty suspicious about airline delay announcements. I don't know what school of optimism or psychology they send those people on, but it seems like they never want to tell us when the flight really is delayed until.

So I cranked up my laptop and connected to a free WLAN (curiously called "Mahara", but it was open enough for my VPN to start without me having to visit a web page or anything - nice). I browsed to the airline arrivals page and discovered that the plane we were due to travel on was due to arrive 45 minutes late.

Sure enough, 20 minutes later we were informed that the plane would be 45 minutes late, and it was.

Why do airlines do this? Is there some psychological study somewhere that says that you should break this bad news 20 minutes at a time, because I sure think I would rather just know the whole lot up front. Do they somehow think that the collective belief of the passengers will cause the incoming jet to be 50% more efficient, and be able to fly the 1 hour route in only 40 minutes?

Fortunately nowadays we can use information sources on the internet to work out the truth before it is announced. I know that when I was flying to Sydney for LCA I flummoxed one of the attendants by telling her when the flight would actually be departing only a few minutes before she announced it to everyone.

I guess it gives me something to do while I wait...