Continental Airline Tickets

Will an airline cancel a flight with too few people on it?

I nonrev a lot and am wary of taking a flight that is WIDE open. Does anyone know if an airline will cancel a flight if there are too few people booked on it? i.e Airbos 320 holds 138 seats in coach and say there are 20 passengers booked, will the airline cancel the flight?

Public Comments

1. Probably not, they'll still need that plane at the next destination.
2. It depends. Airlines don't fly only passengers - they fly cargo as well. So if only a few passengers are booked, the cargo load may still be sufficient to fly anyway. If this is also insufficient to cover costs, well then the airline is heading for a fall, so to speak.
3. I worked for an airline, we would sometimes send out a plane empty or with one person it it. That plane has other places to be, so it still had to go.
4. Yes they will. I have seen it done and have had it done to me. US Airways does it all the time.
5. As a rule Scheduled airlines run to a timetable and have to get the plane to the next destination etc so they tend to fly whether it is full or not. A charter flight on the other hand would probably cancel the flight as it would not be worth them taking off if they didn't have a certain amount of seats sold.
6. Not usually. It would be in breach of their contract of carriage.
7. Depends. If you are flying from the airline's home city (where all their planes are) they just may use a smaller aircraft.
8. They will not cancel the flight as they need the aircraft in place for the next flight.
9. I have never seen them cancel a flight because there weren't enough passengers on it. When I worked for the airlines, I used to send planes out with 1 person. I will say though, that if they are looking for a flight to cancel because they need a crew, an aircraft, whatever the case may be...they prefer to cancel the flights with fewer people..then they take the pilots from the cancelled flight and send them on the full flight. This is seldom and nothing to worry about. I non-reved all the time when I worked at the airport and I never ran into that problem. Good luck!
10. No because the plane is needed to make other flights somewhere. My friend has flown an empty plane before because there are passengers at the destination city who need to board so the aircraft can be used for the next trip. I have been on a 757 with only 20 passengers, a 737 with only 6 passengers and a 777 with only 50 passengers. The flight was never canceled. American Airlines made news because one time they flew a 777 with only 9 passengers from New York to London. Environmentalists said American should have canceled the flight. However there are people in London who need to board that flight to come to the United States.
11. It's unlikely that they will cancel a flight for that reason. As others have said, airlines have to have aircraft and flight crew at their destinations to maintain their schedules. I fly the USAirways Shuttle round trip at least once a week on average - and while the flights are usually mostly full, I've been on planes where they don't have enough passengers to even fill first class. (Not that I'm complaining about those flights...)
12. There is no right or wrong answer for this. I have been on empty planes and I have also been stuck because a plane has been cancelled due to not enough people. I guess it just depends on the situation that day unfortunately.
13. Jeff, how far in advance are you looking? If within next week or so, you are probably OK. My airline is cancelling flights in February and March right now. But I don't think anybody at AA gets in to work in the morning and says "hey, let's canx that wide open trip tomorrow" because 1) it messes up rotation 2) it would be scamming the people who *have* booked! What usually happens to me is that the flight before goes technical, and all of a sudden my flight goes from "wide open" to asking for volunteers....c'est la vie....but hey, I am typing this at home, so far I always got back eventually!