I flew MSP>ORD>MCO on UA on Wednesday and the reverse on Sunday. The MSP>ORD leg was maybe 80%, as was the ORD>MCO leg. Coming back, the MCO>ORD flight (Ted) was packed solid, but the ORD>MSP flight was strangely empty. I had a whole row to myself.

sounds like fare cutting is needed, especially with lower fuel prices.

Yep. You've still got cartel-like behavior on routes without LCC competition. Ideal conditions for an airline like WN to start flying the route to rush into the vacuum created.

Maybe the endgame for the legacies is to shrink down to one route where they can charge $1 million a ticket. :p

TATL won't save the legacies either with RyanAir announcing it will begin TATL service within the year with coach tickets beginning at GBP 8. and service from Dublin and London Stansted to a number of points in the US.

Since Labor Day, I have been flying a lot of JFK/MIA/SJU on what is typically the off times and I am still hearing "this is a very full flight" from the FAs. In October, I flew JFK/EZE and both ways were 100% full. Flights that I have done to DFW and LAX have easily been over 80%.

When I am stuck in Y, I'd like to see some of these less than 50% full flights.:eek:

My UA experiences as of late have all been jam-packed in Y (as they announce it on every flight onboard, too)....on the plane and in the gate area. No one is a happy camper in that UA wing of the airport, it seems! That, and every single leg of every UA flight I've flown has been delayed. Most of mine have been near cross country... SLC-DCA.

F9 this weekend was pretty average...an empty seat in nearly every row. It was enjoyable, for sure.

I have mixed feelings on empty flights. Love the extra room, but I'm a fan of taking bumps :)

MCO - MDW - OMA - MDW - MCO on WN
 

My Monday morning MCO - MDW - OMA and return Thursday afternoon have been over 80% full on WN. The seat gods have been good to me though I have had an empty middle seat about 50% of the time. The OMA - MDW and MDW - OMA legs are almost always completely full. I did notice a lull in late September and early October (to/from MCO) presumably because parents didn't want to take the kids out of school at the beginning of the school year.

RyanAir didn't really announce this at all.

At least 4 of my 5 flight this past weekend were completely full. 5th may have been too.

I flew PHL-ORD-PHL this weekend on US. Both legs were 100% full. I'm not sure if they were overbooked but I didn't hear any call for volunteers.

I flew once a TATL flight and we had more rows on the plane than passengers were on board. ;)

UA ran a 777 from ORD-LHR with 5 pax back in February. Nice.

Agreed ^

Most of the domestic flights I've taken lately have been full. International ones have been empty.

i was on a southwest flight sfo-lax on monday morning and it was less than half full. saturday morning on AA from lax-sfo coach was entirely full with 2 seats left in first. why is southwest doing so poorly on this route?

My intra - TX CO flights in Oct and Nov have been about 80% full. Of course, there were a lot of empty seats in Sept after hurricane Ike.

Lots of full/oversold flights between SEA and SJC this weekend, many almost completely full flights on the return next week.

You'd think on a nerd-heavy route such as this that people would be doing a lot more video conferencing these days instead of flying. :p

As with others here, it's been years since I've seen an empty row in a plane. I think it's been about that long since I've seen an empty middle seat too! :)

Not for me YVR-SYD-YVR. Y looked to be 50-60% full, early Nov.

I had generally the same experience as the OP last week. Flight from LGA-ORD was only 1/2 full. Same for flight from ORD to YEG. YEG to DEN was completely full, but DEN to LGA was only 1/2 full.

Given the length of most of those flights, I was very happy for the extra space.

I did a JFK/MIA/SJU MR Saturday on AA. Primarily huge leisure routes. All flights were said to be nearly full (FA announced to that effect but I was in F.) The slowdown in the economy does not appear to have hit leisure travel, YET. (Next year will probably be a totally different story.)

Many leisure tickets were purchased months ago. Relatively few people plan a vacation a week or two out, but many business folks plan theirs within days, if not hours.

My most recent flights have been full, but then again they were on RJs :( Last week I flew Southwest from Salt Lake City to Boise at 8:30 on Friday evening and there were only 50 people on a plane that can hold 137. Strange for a Friday evening flight as I have taken this flight several times before and it is usually full.

My flights out of DEN to west coast, UA and Frontier, have been full recently. If not already full they are filling with standbys.

My last few flights have been about 1/4 empty. It seems like a desert compared to flying over the past few years, but definitely not empty. These have been both transcons and midcons on AA.

Coming over the pond on NW, the plane was maybe 2/3 full and the preceding domestic leg was probably 80%. Hopping around Europe, I have been on Wizz Air twice and Ryan Air once, all of which were nearly full. At least the LCCs seem to be filling their planes.

I have a flight 12/03 and only two seats are showing available. Hoping for a bump! :D

I just booked a flight LAX-JFK for 12/2. ExpertFlyer shows Y7, but aa.com shows only one middle seat available. I'm praying for an upgrade

Late Jan-early Feb SEA to JFK -- lots of empty seats
 

I'm looking at flying from SEA to JFK on JetBlue (have to use some soon-to-expire JetBlue funds) from 01/30 - 02/03/09.

When I go through the reservation process and get to the seat selection pages, I find that only 20 seats are taken on the outbound flight, and only 15 seats are taken on the return flight. The plane has seats for 150 passengers.

This flight has typically been 90-100 percent full when we've taken JetBlue around this same time of year in past years. Now, I realize it's still two months out, but the current 10-14 percent occupancy rate seems mighty low. I'm holding off on making the reservations, hoping a fare deal becomes available if it looks like they're having trouble filling seats.

Anyway, that's my tidbit of information to add to the discussion...

(emphasis mine)

I think this is the key. Because airline Revenue Management units have changed the way that they handle pricing and inventory many folks have changed the way they purchase tickets. In the "good old days" tickets were always cheapest early on and very expensive at the end. These days tickets are generally expensive early on, get cheaper and then maybe get expensive again. Because of this advance purchase numbers seem to be generally lower in general.

I'm less surprised by the Tuesday return being empty than the Friday outbound.

Plus, a single trip doesn't a trend make.

my two recent JetBlue trips have been fairly packed, in fact the OAK-JFK red-eye was completely full!

--Russ