Continental Airline Tickets

How common is it for flights to take off with over 50% of the seats empty?

Does it happen often that a major airline has flights with most of the seats unfilled? I'm looking for answers from people who work in the air travel industry and would know first hand. Also it will be nice if you have reasons, such as policies and regulations, etc.

Public Comments

1. I've had it happen a couple of times on international flights but it was several years ago. I think many flights that had that problem have been combined with other flights or eliminated.
2. Why do you think people working in the industry would know first hand more than people working outside the industry but flying frequently? Anyway, there was a time when it was not uncommon for planes to fly that empty. Does it happen often in 2010? No.
3. I'm in the travel industry and I can tell you that several airlines have less than 50% load factors on many routes and frequently fly almost empty planes on some sectors. Several states and countries force carriers to utilize their slots or loose them.
4. It does not happen so much any more. When I started flying in the early 70s, it was fairly common for flights to be half full - or less. However, for any single flight, it depends on the departure time, the origin and destination cities. For heavily traveled routes, it would be less often. The number of seats filled by paying passengers is called the load factor, and airlines track this very closely to optimize the equipment they use to the anticipated number of passengers on any route. You can do a lot of research yourself from this web site. Click on the "Load Factor" link right above the top of the chart: http://www.transtats.bts.gov/Data_Elements.aspx?Data=1
5. In the days when the airline industry was more heavily regulated, they often flew aircraft with many empty seats on certain routes, because the government required them to serve those routes in order to provide air transportation to cities where it might not otherwise be profitable. However, back in those days of regulation, air fares were a lot higher, so the airlines could recover some of their losses with revenue from other routes. Today, flying half-empty aircraft is much rarer. Airlines simply cannot afford it in a deregulated environment where even full aircraft may not necessarily provide comfortable margins. But as others here note, they may still be compelled to fly a few lightly loaded airplanes in order to keep valuable airport slots or for other regulatory reasons. On routes with extremely variable passenger loads, an airline might occasionally fly half-empty planes. As long as the average load factor is a lot higher, the route can still make money, although individual flights that are lightly loaded will not. Of course, an airline will analyze such a route in view of eliminating lightly-loaded flights and keeping the ones with high loads, if it can find a pattern in passenger loads (and there's usually some sort of pattern). In some cases, passenger loads don't matter. For example, on some transatlantic routes, the revenue from cargo alone can pay for the entire flight, and any passengers on board are pure gravy for the airline. This requires a lot of cargo flown at relatively high prices, but on some routes you can regularly find that kind of business. A lot of not-too-heavy, pricey cargo moves between Paris and New York, for example. Between Podunk and Lompoc, maybe not.
6. No. It happens but not often. Sometimes, flights will be cancelled and combined with later flights to the same city.