Originally Posted by
ContinentalFan
When searching through planned United flights, sometimes unusual things appear. On any given day, United has somewhere between 20 to 50 empty flights hopping around the world. Most of them look routine (rescues, delivery, maintenance, repositioning). Now and again, you get a few that look unusual.
I’ve seen flights ferried from a hub to two remote airports and back to the hub. Frames heading to airports where I had no idea United contracted work. I’ve wondered why flights ferried between hubs, just can’t be put into service rather than flying empty—I’m sure what United is doing makes the most economic sense. There are a number of occurrences that are just confounding. Here’s the first.
A flight that is ferried requires just a captain and first officer -- no flight attendants, no catering, etc. -- and is therefore significantly cheaper to operate and much easier to steal should you need that frame somewhere else. My guess is UA has done the calculations and the revenue gained from the increased capacity isn't worth the added cost (and potentially hurts their revenue elsewhere if oversupply results in lower average fares)
Also if the flight comes into existence relatively late the logistical challenges of assembling all of the support needed for a revenue flight almost definitely outweigh the benefits -- if there's even a single revenue passenger on board the FAA minimum flight attendant count is required.
Originally Posted by
ContinentalFan
Tomorrow, a B789P is scheduled to fly from LAX to Riverside, CA (RIV). It turns out that RIV is one of the oldest air force bases in the country.
A B789 hops over to Riverside and ends up in Kansas.
This smells way too much like a military charter to not be one -- especially since FOE "...
is a joint civil-military public airport located about seven miles south of downtown Topeka" Charters -- especially of the military and sports variety tend to be canceled, rescheduled, moved forward or back based on the needs of the client.
Originally Posted by
elitelite
I don't think the planes are empty if you see an open seat map. For charters and the like, seat assignments are taken care of differently.
Yes, if it is a chartered aircraft the charterer is usually responsible for the manifest and seating arrangements so they'll rarely (in my snooping) show up on the flight status.
Originally Posted by
EWR764
Going way back into ancient history, United used to have "phantom" flights in the schedule for various training purposes, including "flights" from city ticket offices, bus stations and non-airports, but one would think technology has superseded the need to have these in the system.
Who knows, maybe it hasn't, and there's still some purpose for them?
I'm reminded of two things (1) FedEx phantom recovery flights that used to be there to protect the operation (not sure if, especially in rising fuel costs FedEx still does this) -- where they'd send an empty aircraft up with plenty of fuel and a scenic flight plan for a random destination airport and then divert it to pick up the slack if an aircraft became unavailable for MX or whatever.
and
(2) The old Northwest "Ground Services Format Guide" I have (about a 1" thick binder of 3.5" cards -- not exactly standard pocket IMO) that included the instruction "All VIPS will be recorded on flight 9989 MSPQXA on date being shipped. This allows creation of a VIP record after the actual flight has departed" -- I can't figure out where QXA is/was but it doesn't appear to be a valid IATA city code
