When might CO cancel a flight for light load?
 

I was curious whether CO ever cancels a regularly scheduled flight due to not enough seats being sold. On Feb 5th, I am booked in Coach on CO4 from IAH to LGW and there are only about 15 seats sold in coach. Does CO still send the flight for repositioning purposes or might they cancel the flight due to having potential costs outweigh the revenue?

your #'s are a little off. Where did you get them? It's booked to more than that just in BusinessFirst alone, not even counting coach.

I don't know the answer as I don't work in the biz. But I do think that canceling an international flight bec of loads is very problemmatic bec of routing & dispatching issues. The bird used on IAH-LGW doesn't necessarily return to IAH.
I've flown on some really lonely flights over the years.

Joslire

About the only time it's "hassle" free to cancel ONE flight for light loads would be an "out and back" from a hub to an outstation and back. If you cancel the flight with an aircraft NOT returning to it's first departure point, you create way more headaches than it is worth. Not only is the aircraft out of position, but so are the flight attendants and pilots. Just ONE late/cancelled flight can create multiple problems.

Edited to add: Oh yeah, if another more profitable/flight with higher loads has a maintenance issue or whatever, you can expect your lightly loaded flight will be given the shaft in favor of the other flight :)

Flights are not cancelled just because of light loads. This does not mean it couldn't be taken to replace a "broken" aircraft, however.

Also checked the return flight and it is full so that aircraft will be needed in LGW.

A lot of times it's what's in the hold that keeps the plane going (cargo, mail, etc...) regardless of pax load. I can see this being particularly the case with int'l ops.

Load factor is not the only consideration taken when canceling a flight. Remember there is also the cargo and mail to and from as well as all of the same factors for the return flight to consider.

The mail and cargo play a role and still about 3 weeks to go. Someone will get on that flt. and I bet it goes. The summer makes up for the odd light flight to LGW in the dead of winter.

Thanks to all for your insight.

In response to your question Jerseycitys, I had mentioned the number of seats in Coach, not BF. I looked at the seat map and counted the seats that were occupied.

While it might seem such, the seat map is usually an inaccurate indicator of flight loads. Many reserved pax may not have seats assigned yet.

thanks. I actually bought an H fare on this flight. As a Plat, I thought to try my luck for a mileage upgrade. I got the upgrade on the reutrn, but not on the outbound. The CO agent told me that it appeared that I still had a chance at getting the upgrade on this flight from IAH-LGW, but based on many topics on Flyertalk about this-- who knows.

It is actually illegal for the airlines to cancel flights for these reasons. As mentioned above, sometimes carriers will develop a "mechanical" and cancel, but in general they just fly them with the low load

Delta just predicts bad weather 24 hours before flights that are not filled and does a "preemptive weather cancellation."

Just wondering if you have any references to base the illegality of this on. As of Oct 05, Delta was publicly admitting that they practice "economic cancellations"

SF Chronicle

That's not true. They are required to re-accomodate you but are allowed to cancel flights for pretty much any reason.

Often, flights with low loads are cancelled to re-balance a schedule after a mechanical cancellation and/or weather related cancellations. That way, the airline can get back on schedule without flying empty planes around.