Flying some FL repo legs arent we? ;)

Last year my wife was the ONLY passenger on a WN flight from MSY to DAL. The gate attendant came to her and asked her by name if she'd like to board. The Captain would then address her by name when he came on the intercom. I would have loved to have been her. They of course still had to close the cockpit door.

This post intrigued me. November of 2007 Northwest Flight from DTW to MCO, a 757-300 which I believe is 224 passengers or there abouts. I guess a Tokyo to Detroit flight was delayed or cancelled and about 200 of those passengers were all going to Orlando on the flight I was on. First class had 4 people and coach about 10 which they once in the air all upgraded to first. They needed this plane in Orlando for the back to Detroit full flight so they went ahead and did not wait for the Tokyo plane. Always wondered what happened to those 200 or so people and how and when they made it to Orlando.

I've been on a flight a few years ago BNA-MDW-PVD where it was delayed for many hours at BNA due to a storm at MDW. They ended up moving all of us BNA-MDW passengers to flights which had been diverted into BNA, and flew directly BNA-PVD with just 4 passengers so that the plane would be in place for a 6am PVD-LAS.

About 30 years ago I was on a PanAm intra-California repositioning flight. 7 of us on a 747. Fare was $19. The next time I bought the $13 standby fare. :D

A couple months later a gasoline shortage developed. Between that and word of mouth, PanAm eventually filled those repositioning flights!

About 15 years ago, I was on a IAH-CMH flight on CO at 7am on 12/26. I think there were about 10 of us total. I was the only one in F and they had catered 12 meals! Too bad, I wasn't really hungry!!

On WN, I recently had a SEA-PHX flight was only 25 passengers on a Sunday night. I thought that was very unusual.

Back in the late 1990s, I flew ProAir (anyone remember them?) MKE-DET on Christmas Day. I think there were maybe around 19 people on board that 737-400.

Back when Porter first started flying to MDW, I flew a round trip on them to YTZ, and I think we had maybe 12 passengers in one direction, and 8-10 or so in the other (the last few times I've flown them, though, their flights have been full).

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B206 Safari/7534.48.3)

I did the 6a PDX-PHX on the day after thanksgiving a few years ago and there were four of us. That flight was a blast. I slept on the exit row floor (after putting blankets down).

A few of the 6a LAS-TUS flights or 10p TUS-LAX flights I've been on have had <20 people.

That surprises me greatly. I wonder if there was a cruise delay back to port with this flight or this was right after a hurricane.

I see this happening years go when they had a ton more flights.

Another airline may have cancelled the flight because of too few people.

Earlier this month I was on a first am flight out of Denver.early enough that this flight would have been just Denver based passengers..thus the plane was under 20%. It appeared even more barren because many opted to concentrate in the front of the aircraft.

I have been on a few routes where the special substitute an aircraft because of an event happening. I flew out of Nashville on delta and they flew people in for a Nashville bowl game the night before ( game was that night) . The plane was pretty sparse given it should have been a 37-50 sweater but was changed to a 737

When I flew the day after Thanksgiving once Ihad a flight with about 39 and another with 17. The inbound of mine that day was a 6am fromTPA-FLL which had 1 person on board. Apparently she slept the whole flight. I've been on a few flights with about 50 people on board on Southwest and Delta.

Monday, October 10th 1988, OMA-MKE, 6:00am flight timed to feed the Northwest mini hub. Three of us on a 100-seat DC9-30. And being back in the day when seats were automatically assigned, the three of us (strangers) were assigned adjacent seats in the back.

Had a Saturday evening DEN-MDW flight last year with 12. Even better as 5 of us were CP holders all traveling on award/point tickets with our CPs and only 2 were rev passengers. Surprised the flight went since WN lost a lot of money flying it but the equipment was needed in MDW for a Sunday morning departure.

Not really empty in the ways others have posted, but I have various memories from the 80s and 90s flying MSP-NRT on NW 747s, at least once or twice a year. I can't remember a single one of those flights where I didn't have an entire middle row to stretch out and sleep in. With the armrests up, it was the original fully-flat seat. :p

SWA OKC DAL had 9 once

In 1989 I flew DEN ORD on UA 727-200 last flight to Chicago. We had a total of 4 of us in F/C, Y was empty. Two young female F/A's working the flight invited me to coach mid flight. I won't go into details, but I joined the mile high club that night lol.

I love revisionist history ;)