Swiss almost empty flights!!

Don’t be so silly! Cancelling the flight would damage their image much more than the loss made by operating the flight!

You think Swiss could damage their reputation any more than they already have? :confused:

I know people who’ve had bookings for lunchtime flights with Swiss this month, that have temporarily been suspended for the ‘low season’ (the flights from Basel-Vienna/Amsterdam/Brussels etc), who’ve been rebooked onto either the morning or evening flights, and then only told about the change when they turned upto check-in. Kind of takes away the point of passengers having meetings planned, really, dosen’t it?

My ex-misses used to fly as an in-flight chef in first class for Gulf-Air and on a few flights the first and business class were completly empty. Gulf Air hadnt even upgraded anybody as the ‘cheap’ seats were only half full too. So all my misses did was sit in the cockpit jump seat all flight

Airlines have to operate a certain number of flights on each routing, otherwise they could lose the slots at an airport. Sometimes, this means an airline operating on particular days with low loads in order to keep their historical slot rights.

I was pleasantly surprised on Christmas Eve when returning from my two night break in Scotland with British Airways.

Being the second to last service from Edinburgh before Christmas, I was expecting the 757 to be completely full. Instead, it had no more than 25 or 30 people on it.

Swiss operate daily A320 flights sometimes a RJ100.I have no idea how they fill those planes whih it now seems it dont.There fares arnt as low as Aer Lingus on the DUB-ZRH route.They are going better than Swissair was so they are obviously doing somthing right.

Guys, just to clarify that scheduled carriers are able to cancel flights for any reason they like. It is in fact charter carriers who are obliged to operate any flight that they have contracted to do so.

That is why you end up with situations like the recent MyTravel 40 hour delays, where with no other aircraft available they had no choice but to play catch up. A scheduled carrier would have just cancelled flights to get itself back on track.

1L.

I think they should place a A320 on the MAN service or make it a thrice-daily service. When we went 2 weeks ago, both flight were well overbooked!

Swaps do happen, but not that often, mainly because:

1. Aircraft rotation patterns are worked out in advance, and the higher capacity may be required on a later service on the same airplane later in the day

2. In many cases crew availability and qualifications may restrict the swapping of aircraft, especially if night-stops away from a base are part of the crew plots

3. Swiss use some of the GVA-ZRH-GVA services to move a/c from and to maintenance and sell these “ferries” anyway to make some money out of what would otherwise be a total non-rev sector

4. Smaller a/c wouldn’t always work on longer sectors due range/payload restrictions

Andy

why not have a smaller a/c?

Don’t be so silly! Cancelling the flight would damage their image much more than the loss made by operating the flight!

Quite right, Skymonster, I agree.

Wouldn’t you be p!ssed off if your flight was simply cancelled, EAL_King, just because the airline didn’t have the amount of passengers they wanted?

It is entirely possible that the airline’s next sector using that aircraft had a healthy load of passengers and, therefore, made this particular sector worthwhile anyway – but not that that should be a consideration for cancelling a flight either, in my opinion.

Once published in the schedule and sold on their CRS and on GDSs, airlines really have an obligation to operate their flights – they’re not charter airlines, you know. A few weeks ago I flew ATH-FRA on a Lufthansa A300-600 that couldn’t have had more than about 30 people on it total – makes for a nice ride for the passengers, even if its not a money spinner for the airline!!!

ANdy