Originally Posted by
sbm12
It is generally hard to sell a random one-off flight at anything remotely resembling full price. Even more difficult without cannibalizing your other operations. And it means you have to know well in advance exactly which date it is going in, with no margin for shifting maintenance schedules since that would mean accommodating 200ish passengers. And you would then have to crew the flight and get all the crew back out of town eventually.
Plenty of reasons not to bother with passengers on the plane.
Moreover, since the maintenance positioning flights operate under 14 CFR Part 91, they will not carry paying customers. They could operate under Part 121 in theory, but then the issues that you note come into play.