Today began as many travel days do. I checked the phone and looked to see what United's app said before jumping in the shower. Like usual it said our flight should take off on time and land a few minutes early.

After wrapping up the suitcase and heading outside I got my first indication how wrong that was. The often sunny Cupertino was showing it's rainy-season side again with torrential rains. During my first meeting of the day I pulled up the FAA's website and sure enough just down the road San Francisco Airport showed a flow control program in effect. Flow control delays are often quite exacerbating when you're on smaller regional jets because you wait around for the aircraft that was late, get on board and then end up waiting, sometimes for quite a while, for clearance to take off because the FAA is managing traffic flows into the airport you're headed to. Read more about United could do better