Mrs Floyd and I are scheduled to fly to Vancouver in June on NZ24.

In good geeky fashion I’ve been tracking this flight for the last few months and it appears to be cancelled at a frequency of once every 20-25 trips, so close to 5%.  Unsure of the reasons but they don’t appear to be environmental as there are other flights departing and arriving at that time, so I’m guessing it’s either shortage of planes or crews or mechanical.  (Is there any way of finding out?)

My question is what happens to get those passengers to Vancouver in a timely fashion?  There is just the one Air NZ flight on that route per day and one would assume there isn’t room on the next day’s flight to fit all the ones from that day’s cancellation.
Would they route them via the US?  This would then mean non-US passport holders (the majority) would need to quickly apply for an ESTA and hope it goes through right? Or via Aus on some other airlines perhaps.  Or are they just spread over the next few NZ24 flights until the backlog is clear, potentially shortening people’s holidays.

Our starting port will actually be WLG so if the cancellation is announced before we leave there I guess we probably won't even be allowed to board our domestic flight?

And would you still be guaranteed to fly in the same class that you booked in (Prem Ec. In our case) on your re-scheduled flight or get bumped to a lower class and told to suck it up?

This could apply to numerous other destinations as well of course.

Thoughts? Experiences?
(Am I being too paranoid? …. Probably. 😀)