English
Vancouver International does not publish a delay figure, and the airline app only tells you about your own flight once the delay has already happened. This page reads the four public feeds that decide the answer earlier — the airfield observation, the terminal forecast, the NAV CANADA notice file, and the FAA's list of American airports under a delay programme — and turns them into one line: is today a normal day at YVR, or not.
Delays likely
VFRRight now the airfield has no cloud ceiling and 20 statute miles of visibility.
- A runway is out of service right now (13/31), reopening Friday 21:45 local. The short crosswind runway is the one affected, which matters on a windy day and very little otherwise.
- An approach aid is out of service, which matters most when the cloud base is low.
- The FAA is running delay programmes at Boston, San Diego, Seattle.
What the feeds actually say
On the airfield right now
observed Sun 08:00 · Environment Canada observation relayed by NOAA
Raw observation
METAR CYVR 041500Z VRB02KT 20SM SKC 10/10 A3007 RMK SLP186Risk windows before your flight
| Window | Category | What the forecast says |
|---|---|---|
| Sun 08:00 – Sun 12:00 | IFR | base 500 ft, 2 SM, tempo |
| Sun 08:00 – Sun 10:00 | LIFR | base 200 ft, 0.75 SM, prob |
| Mon 03:00 – Mon 09:00 | IFR | base 500 ft, 1 SM, prob |
Times are Vancouver local. Only the periods that drop below instrument minimums or gust past 30 knots are listed — the calm parts of the forecast are left out on purpose.
Runways and approach aids
From the NAV CANADA NOTAM file for CYVR, filtered to closures that cost scheduled flights time.
RWY 13/31 CLSD AVBL AS TWY HEL TKOF AND LDG AUTH FM THR 31.)
10-04 08:59 → 12-19 04:45 UTC
VANCOUVER DME IMK 111.1MHZ/CH48X U/S)
ILS RWY 13 U/S)
TWY F BTN TWY C AND TWY AS CLSD.)
08-26 04:04 → 11-25 14:00 UTC
Your US destination
Every US airport served non-stop from YVR, checked against the FAA national airspace status feed. General-aviation-only restrictions are filtered out.
FAA reports departure delays. Flights from YVR are affected. Carriers on this route: Alaska, Air Canada, WestJet.
FAA wording
WX:Low VisibilityFAA reports ground delay programme, average 44 minutes. Flights from YVR are affected. Carriers on this route: Air Canada, Alaska.
FAA wording
airport volumeFAA reports ground delay programme, average 1 hour. Flights from YVR are affected. Carriers on this route: Air Canada.
FAA wording
low ceilingsClear right now: Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver, Chicago O'Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Newark, New York JFK, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Honolulu, Maui.
Traffic in the air
13 aircraft are inside forty nautical miles of YVR right now, 8 of them below ten thousand feet — climbing out, or on the approach.
Live ADS-B, community receivers via adsb.lol
What a delay at YVR actually looks like
Vancouver has one long parallel pair, 08L/26R and 08R/26L, plus the short crosswind runway 13/31, and it sits two metres above the Strait of Georgia on the silt of the Fraser delta. That geography is the whole story. On a clear day the two parallels run independent approaches and the field absorbs everything the schedule throws at it. On a December morning with fog on the river, arrivals go single-file down one instrument approach, the arrival rate roughly halves, and aircraft that should have turned around in fifty minutes turn around in ninety.
The delay you experience is almost never the weather at your departure time. It is the weather three hours earlier, propagated through an aircraft that is now somewhere else. That is why the forecast table above is worth more than the current observation if your flight is this evening, and why an airline will tell you at the gate that your aircraft is inbound from Calgary.
Snow is the other failure mode and it behaves differently. Vancouver gets little of it and keeps a modest de-icing capability, so a centimetre that Calgary would ignore can push YVR into hour-long holds while each aircraft waits its turn in the bays. If snow is in the forecast table above, treat the number you see as optimistic.
If you are already delayed
Establish the cause before you argue about money. Canada pays compensation only for delays inside the airline's control. The sections above are dated, sourced and screenshot-able, which is exactly what a claim needs: if no runway was closed, the field was clear and no FAA programme was running, the airline's "weather" explanation is checkable.
Rebook before you queue. The agent at the desk and the airline app draw on the same inventory, and the app answers in seconds while the queue takes an hour. Everyone in that line is chasing the same seats.
If it slips past midnight, the Canada Line stops around 01:15 from the airport and the first train leaves just before 05:00. A taxi downtown is a flat-rate zone fare; a hotel at the airport is a nine-minute walk or one SkyTrain stop, and there are hotels beside the terminal that will take a same-night booking. If the delay is long enough that you are now spending a day here, our YVR arrival guide covers the exits, and what to do in Vancouver covers the rest.
Driving south instead? On a bad day at the airport the road to Seattle is often the better answer, and our live border wait times page tells you what the queue at Peace Arch is doing this hour.
Questions people actually ask
Is YVR delayed right now?
The card at the top of this page answers that from live data rather than from memory. It reads the current cloud base and visibility at the field, any runway or approach aid that is out of service, and whether the FAA has stopped or metered departures to an American city YVR flies to. When all three are clear, the airport is running normally and a late flight is an aircraft problem or a crew problem rather than an airport one.
Why does this page not list individual flights?
Because we cannot read them honestly. Vancouver Airport's own flight board is closed to automated access, and the open flight databases now require a paid key, so any per-flight number here would be a guess dressed as data. The feeds this page does use are official, free and citable, and they answer the question you have before you leave home. For your specific flight, the airline's own app is the only source that knows about your aircraft.
What actually causes delays at YVR?
Low cloud and fog, far more than storms. YVR sits on the Fraser delta at two metres above sea level, and from late October through February the field goes below instrument minimums on quiet, windless mornings — exactly the weather that looks harmless from a downtown window. When the ceiling drops, controllers space arrivals further apart, the arrival rate falls, and the queue shows up as departure delays two hours later. Snow is rarer but worse, because de-icing adds twenty to forty minutes per aircraft and the bays are limited.
My flight to the US is delayed and the weather in Vancouver is fine. Why?
Look at the destination section above. Roughly half of YVR's departures go south, and when San Francisco is fogbound or Newark is thunderstormed the FAA issues a ground delay programme or a ground stop that reaches back to every departure airport, Vancouver included. Your aircraft is then held at the gate here with a calculated take-off time. That is why this page checks nineteen American airports rather than only the weather outside the window.
How much compensation am I owed for a delayed flight from Vancouver?
Under Canada's Air Passenger Protection Regulations, a delay within the airline's control that is not safety-related pays CAD 400 for three to six hours, CAD 700 for six to nine, and CAD 1,000 beyond nine on a large carrier such as Air Canada or WestJet; small carriers pay 125, 250 and 500. Weather, air traffic control and security decisions are outside the airline's control and pay nothing, though the airline still owes you rebooking and, after two hours, food and drink. This matters for the page you are reading: if the delay is weather or an FAA programme, it is not compensable, and the sections above tell you which it was.
How often does this page update?
Every thirty minutes, automatically. The observation behind it is issued hourly and amended whenever conditions change, the forecast every six hours, and the FAA feed continuously. Each section prints the time of the reading it is showing, and if a feed does not answer the page says so instead of reprinting an old number as a fresh one.
When should I leave for YVR?
Two hours before a domestic departure, three before transborder or international. Transborder flights clear United States customs in Vancouver before boarding, so a US departure needs the extra hour whatever this page says. If the card above reads anything other than running normally, add the delay to your buffer rather than subtracting it from your arrival time — the security queue does not shrink because your aircraft is late.
For journalists & editors
Canonical page: fanvancouver.com/vancouver/yvr-flight-delays/
Machine-readable version of every figure above: /api/fv_yvr_delays.json, rebuilt every thirty minutes, with each source timestamp preserved.
Observations and forecasts come from NOAA's Aviation Weather Center relaying Environment and Climate Change Canada; notices to airmen from NAV CANADA; delay programmes from the FAA national airspace status feed. We measure nothing ourselves and hold no flight-level data — cite the agencies, not us, and confirm with them before publishing a figure.
