After a particular airport has been out of operation for week, how in the world do the airlines take care of the backlog? I can think of 3 ways the backlog reduces itself:

1) natural attrition -- some people cancel travel plans, or already used alternate arrangements, or die, or whatever

2) airline fills up existing flights once ops resume (100% capacity)

3) additional flights to get the airline above 100% capacity


In a case where 1/2 a continent has nobody going to or from, I don't see how these 3 factors will reduce the backlog in any meaningful "near future". How in the world do the airlines move a million people who already should have been somewhere? I just don't see how they would have the crew (most important) or equipment (maybe they have idle planes, more likely than idle crew) to do it.

So how is it done?

Wow, I can't believe no one has responded to this. It was actually a significant part of the NPR story this evening on the travel re-start. They reported it would take up to 2 weeks to clear the backlog; the interviewer said that actually seemed kind of short to her, and it does to me as well.

They also said ticketed passengers get priority on scheduled flights (of course), and after that foreign visitors trying to get home would take precedence over (for example) British citizens trying to get out of London on holiday.

It is #2, with occasional extra sections if they can find the hardware and crews, but for the long-haul stuff that is quite unlikely. Most airlines don't have a bunch of wide-body aircraft sitting around in flight-ready status.

With flight loads generally averaging around 80%+ it would theoretically take about a month to clear 5 days of back-logs. Enough people will cancel that it won't take that long.

Assuming zero attrition rate, my airline estimates we will clear our backlogs in the UK by Tuesday 27th April, in Germany by Sunday 25th April but at our home base returning to the EU only by Saturday 8th May.

Tonight we have 169 seats flying into the EU and over 700 passengers at the airport begging/bribing/threatening to get on the flight. BA has ~200 seats and over 1200 passengers. The army has been called out to provide security at the airport.