empty empty empty-my recent flights are empty
 

3 in a row, and i know it is scattered and random, but boy they are really quiet in Y, and i asked an FA and she said last 3 weeks, biz has fallen off in Y dramatically

Ah, I love empty flights. Hope the trend continues!

Any data points, you'd like to share?

Good thinking. Empty flights --> no revenue --> fewer flights --> no airline left to love.

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Last week all 4 of my flights were quite full. I guess I'll see tomorrow.

My flights have been quite full (>80%) recently.

This is the time of year we call "Calm before the storm".

People tend to curtail travel until the Thanksgiving rush..then all hell breaks loose!

Oh, I hope just the flights I'm on are empty :D

Besides - no UA might be a good thing . . . .

For me (usually 2 to 3 UAL flights a week), it's been a weirdly disproportionate full/emptiness.

On long haul domestic/cross country, regular economy is packed to the freaking gills, and Economy Plus less than 1/2 full.

On short haul, the flights are less full, and Economy+ is vacant.

Routinely now they have a senior gate agent come on board to try to upsell, usually after several people get pissed off after being told they can't move up to the nice empty seats up front without paying more.

Haven't flown UA in a few weeks but my recent TPE-BKK roundtrip on TG was very quiet.

The return - everybody had a row of 3 to themselves in Y and the back section was completely empty - probably a load of <10% in Y.

I have several UA flights booked between now and March, mostly international, and the seatmaps look very sparse (I am the only seat in C assigned trans-pacific both directions for example)

Yes I know seatmaps don't tell the whole story but I have never seen them so empty...

I fly to/from LAS. My flights are ALWAYS nearly full, usually with tourists.

My flights last weekend were all full, with one even at the point of asking for volunteers, and actually IDBing people. Also, I have several Y class flights booked for later this month, and one of them looks full, and one is currently at all 0's except for Y1 B1.

October trip to Asia, all flights FULL in all classes (they took 1 VDB on my HKG-SFO flight). SFO-ORD was full in F, I think a handful of empties in Y, but not many. Even my MBS-ORD-MBS flights were mostly full, just 3-4 empty seats on a CRJ--lucky me, I got one of the empties next to me both times.

I do BWI-LAX and they are always very full... They were offering VDB on my last flight out to LAX but unfortunately I had a schedule to keep...

-K

IIRC mid Nov is dead until USA thanksgiving..... right?

Just checked in for my flights tomorrow on CO and they are pretty full. Not packed, but pretty full. Definitely going to be filled middle seats on those flights.

Three of my last four flights in the past week have been < 80% full, which is unusual on UA. I think this is just the slowest time of the year at least in the U.S.

I haven't seen any empty row in 3+ years. Maybe it's just continental.

Fewer elites and buy-ups?

Air canada is its usual sea of humanity....lucky...
 

....you!^

Try flying in and out of MCO, not a lot of spare seats from what I have seen lately.

I flew out and into MCO last week on AirTran- the flight to IND was about 80% full, but the flight back was pretty empty- window and aisles seats were available to all who wanted them.

It’s the time of the year, as well as some anecdotal evidence posted here recently that some companies are cutting back on travel budgets, IMO.

All of my flights lately have been packed. If your flights are that empty look for them to cancel the leg, airlines are trimming out their low revenue flights, so, unless your flights are moving metal they won't last.

I'm still finding my flights to/from SIN are full and often waitlisted on SQ. Recently itineraries SIN-MEL-SIN and SIN-AKL-SIN (and AKL-SIN-AKL) have all had segments require waitlisting, sometimes for months.

QF SYD-SIN a couple weeks ago was pretty empty in Y/Y+ but full in J/F. QF on 30 Oct/4 Nov SIN-PER-SIN was full in J, empty in Y on the outbound; full in J and oversold in Y on the return.

SFO-NRT flights have been packed...

My DL flights are completely full and some oversold.

Tonight that I am flying from PHX-ATL-JAX on DL. The flight is overbooked from PHX-ATL but, I am already got my upgrade into F class tonight. There is another flight from ATL-JAX will be very empty flight each way from ATL-JAX-ATL. I'm sure hope if I will upgrade once I am returns back home to PHX. It wasn't full flight at all from ATL-JAX-ATL. I always checking the loads doing from my flight.

Which flight were you on?

PWM -> EWR -> RIC on Wednesday via CO (Colgan and ExpressJet), and back on Friday. None of the 4 legs were more than 50% full. I even had 12B and C to myself on an ERJ :)

(wish this thread was in the Continental forum; I'd have a better chance of annoying BocaStephen :D)

I flew DTW-LHR-DTW on NW a couple weeks ago and both directions were quite empty. Just about everyone had their whole row to themselves. I had the lovely 4-across seats all for me in both directions. Paid Y fare (even though that was pretty expensive TBH) and was able to lie fully flat and actually get some good shut eye for a change. Thats never happened to me before in coach, and I was grateful. The FA's were commenting on the light load all the way...

Also flew DTW-OKC-DTW last weekend and the flights were more fully booked. Still managed both C&D to myself on the CRJ each way though... ;)

It's a cyclical low for passengers, but the usual response is to offer targeted or limited-date fare deals to fill seats. Many of us with time flexibility who were maintaining elite status on our own dime would wind up doing disproportionate amounts of qualifying travel during the spring and fall lulls simply because that's when deals happened or when seats became available.

OTOH, I think the economic distress this year, and especially in recent weeks, is enough to keep a lot of discretionary travelers away. Airlines haven't been passing on lower fuel costs (they've cut flights rather than doing discounting), and taxes on hotels and especially rental cars aren't looking very fair in light of the current economy. You've also got places like Las Vegas that are doing discounting but have taken so many flight cuts that it's hard to get there cheaply from some places.

To make a long story short, I'm one of the people not being seen this year who has been there in past years. I think there are quite a few.

The only flights on CO I've been on with less than 80% load were come Colgan Air flights where everyone had to sit behind row 7, and most of them were pretty full in the back then, so about 45-50% loads.

My wife was on SFO->PVG. While the row started out with passengers they later moved to find more space, leaving her with a row of 3 to curl up in.

I've been taking 4 flights/week over the past several weeks and all have been 75%+ loads (all on DL). Last time I was on a plane that was maybe 50% full was on a Friday morning LAS-LAX flight back in February on an AA MD-80.

I flew SEA-YKA once on Christmas day on a Q200, and that little thing wasn't even quarter full.

I flew MLI-ORD-LGA this afternoon on UA. ORD-LGA was half full, maybe a little less. The following UA ORD-LGA flight was canceled, and I suspect it may have been a capacity issue as only four passengers were flying standby on my flight.

I had row 6 to myself on WN 0196 (BWI-BNA evening flight) two weeks ago.

This weekend I was on 12 flights. The 4 CO flights were 90%+ loads. At least one (and I think 2) was 100%, all of them were full in F. The 8 UA flights were a mixed bag. Two of them were <50% (DEN-OKC-DEN) where everyone in E+ pretty much had their own row across and E- wasn't 100% full either, one was full and the others were 50-70%.

CO's domestic LF for October was 83%, 0.5% higher than 2007. Consolidated LF was 79%, 0.5% lower than 2007.

CO posts its month-to-date consolidated LF on its website's "Investor Relations" page. It is 77.3% as of 11/9. (Whole month 11/07 was 80.1%)

So, LF is holding up pretty well.