Originally Posted by
Often1
Rather than arguing about the nits, the bottom line is:
1. WN, just like all carriers, reports cancellations and reasons to DOT. If WN reports "maintenance" when it is really "load factor", that is a false statement which is a felony under federal law. Not likely that WN does that. A pretty tough accusation for folks to make without clear evidence.
2. WN, just like other carriers, does have to make aircraft utilization decisions all the time. If the aircraft scheduled to be used for the A-B 1x/day flight which is overbooked at refundable fares goes MX, there is an undersold flight on a route which has 6 more services that day and plenty of room on those services and there is no spare aircraft at A, WN may very well redirect the aircraft for the latter service to the former service.
There is no "right" to a specific aircraft on a specific flight.
This is the correct answer. WN does NOT cancel a flight ONLY because of low loads (source: I have been on numerous flights with 12 pax, 20 pax, etc.). It would be a bad idea anyway because then the aircraft would be out of position. However, if one plane goes mechanical, they will shuffle the remaining planes around so as to inconvenience as few passengers as possible (and I would argue that this is actually quite passenger-friendly, in addition to being helpful to their operations). Suppose they have one working plane and two flights that need to leave in the next hour: a transcon service 1x/day that is fully booked, and a short service that operates 5x/day that is lightly booked. Any reasonable observer would say they should cancel the short hop, because it's much easier to rebook a small number of passengers on a flight that is 2 hours. Fewer people are delayed and they are delayed for a shorter period of time.