mherdeg

Tonight's UA364 SFO-OGG is a 757-300 booked with about 50 pax total — about 7 in first, about 40 in coach. It's due to depart at 8:05pm and after a 90 min turnaround in OGG it returns as a 12:55am OGG-SFO.

Of those pax, I have met at least 5 who are on tonight's UA1213 ORD-SFO, a very full 747 which has experienced a 2+ hr mechanical delay and is now due to land at 8:25pm (and be at the gate about 8:40pm). I heard from a flight attendant on board that they heard from someone in operations that ORD-SFO has as many as 40 pax all connecting to SFO-OGG (but I'm not sure if that's true or if they misunderstood).

Given the tight turn the SFO-OGG flight has in its schedule, I am guessing that UA is going to let the aircraft go out on time or depart early and just cope with all the misconnecting passengers.

What is the smallest number of people you have ever seen on a flight to Hawaii?

travelinmanS

I was on an OGG-SFO daytime flight mid-October last year with first full and about 30 people in economy. I left my seat in first and went back to an economy "lie-flat".

Least crowded flight I've been on in the last 14 years.

WineCountryUA

Not particularly important since the aircraft is likely needed in OGG to do the return flight.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

Ancient history, but I was on a UA 747 SFO-HNL in late '70s with passengers outnumbered by crew. Plane was doing a one-off to retrieve some conventioneers in HNL.

The OGG-SFO looks a little bit better than 1/2 booked, not counting NSRAs on waitlist. I didn't even know UA had a post-midnight departure on Saturdays (I guess Sunday, really...).

bmwe92fan

Exactly - I was on a flight from London to Chicago last week that was so empty in economy they actually made an announcement that people can pick whatever row they want but can't take the Economy plus rows without paying...

J and F were pretty full - total boarding time was like 5 minutes - never seen this flight so empty...

SEA1K4EVR

Yeah looks pretty empty on flight status..and still shows on time. Flight in from ORD arriving at a nearby gate but whether they will hold is anyone's guess.

On a side note I saw something I've never seen before. On the upgrade list for UA 364 it says:

United First®: 24 | Booked: 7 | Checked In: 11

Something new every day..

mherdeg

We'll have to see. With wx at SFO, it probably makes more sense operationally for UA to send out the empty aircraft SFO-OGG and rebook all the misconnects (a few dozen?) overnight. It's just … sad.

I'm thinking it's non-revenue pax. Weird display. The flight was booked stable at 4/24 yesterday night, shot up to 7/24 today, and earlier in the afternoon it was booked 7/24 with just 2 people on the upgrade list (who were both NRSA - also on the standby list).

Edit: ok, they offloaded us. Guess they intend to run the SFO-OGG on time. I now see 7 pax confirmed in First — it's possible that most or all of the F pax who were offloaded were connecting revenue pax and it's just NRSAs on this SFO-OGG? Very interesting.

sbm12

A 90 minute turn isn't that tight at a domestic station.

LAXOGG

Correct. Ground staff at OGG is amazing. I witnessed a 45 minute total turn last year out of OGG. (t helped that the loads in both directions were approximately 50%).


To answer OP's question, in 1990 I flew on a UA redeye out of OGG to LAX with only 12 Passengers on board.

docbert

Coincidentally, 12 is also roughly the number of threads there are in this forum on the exact same topic of least people on a flight...

JVPhoto

Something tells me you do this often.

DWFI

I once flew a SQ flight from IAH-DME on Jan 1 that was booked 1 in F (me), 8 in J, and 33 in Y. That's a 77W with ~300 seats.

wxguy

I once flew on a UA 747SP that was 0F, 0J, 0Y. Repositioning flight SFO-JFK, with me and three pilots in the cockpit. T/O to FL410 in (what felt like) seconds.

PaulInTheSky

SFO-OGG isn't that crowded at all. You can see most of the evening flights are very empty. You can definitely make an argument to force the connection at OGG on the way to HNL.