The secret to booking a flight with no other passengers on board

Why? John Strickland, an aviation consultant, explained: “If an aircraft is operating almost empty on a particular flight, it is likely that it will be pretty full in the other direction, so cannot be cancelled. Another factor might be that cargo is being carried which may mean that the flight is still profitable.” Furthermore, airlines lose their valuable airport slots if they are not sufficiently used – at least 80 per cent of the time, under current rules (though there are proposals to overhaul these) – incentivising carriers to plough on even when a flight has sold poorly.

So what are the best tactics if you want to find yourself surrounded by empty seats?

The late show

Choosing an unappealing departure time is one obvious move.

“There’s no way to ‘ensure’ you end up on an empty flight, but you can certainly place good bets,” said Gilbert Ott, the creator of the travel blog godsavethepoints.com. “Between New York and London, for example, the last flight of the day (in both directions) will typically be the most quiet, as business travellers prefer earlier flights. There’s often a lot of space in all cabins on the VS25 (Virgin Atlantics’s 8.25pm departure) and BA183 (British Airways’ 7pm departure) going to New York.”

In some parts of the world, summer is when planes are most likely to be full and winter is when the number of empty seats is at its highest. This is particularly the case in Europe, though in the Asia-Pacific region, and on Australian domestic routes, the difference is quite small.

Flying during public holidays can also increase your chances. In the aforementioned example, Kimmy Chedel and Zoe Doyle struck gold with Emirates on a Christmas Day departure, and Henry Harteveldt, a US-based aviation analyst, added: “I have seen a number of people posting how they’re the only passenger, or one of very few, on flights on major holidays such as Christmas, Thanksgiving in the US, and New Year’s morning.”

Conversely, flying with a budget airline is likely to lessen your chances. Ryanair is the undisputed master when it comes to putting bums on seats, with a PLF that ranges from 92 per cent in low season to 96 per cent in summer. EasyJet’s was 89.2 per cent for 2023, Jet2’s was 90.7 per cent. Conversely, the likes of Qantas, British Airways, Emirates and Lufthansa normally fill around 80 per cent of their seats, while Etihad’s PLF rarely tops 75 per cent.

The weirder the better

Harteveldt also recommended flying to or from smaller cities for the best hope of getting some breathing room, as well as with airlines on a route that they are not well known for offering. Opting for a recently launched (but, in an ideal world, not heavily publicised) service, therefore, might bear fruit. Furthermore, if you hear that an airline has just discontinued a route (likely a response to low demand), boarding one of the final services could provide that private-jet experience.

The UK’s Civil Aviation Authority data confirms that opting for an offbeat route can pay dividends. During the first quarter of 2023, for example, every flight from Gatwick to Mauritius had at least 50 passengers on board, as did 99 per cent of flights from Heathrow to Barbados. Surprise, surprise: flights to tropical idylls during the peak winter season are usually full. But over the same period, 24 per cent of flights from Heathrow to Bulgaria, 39 per cent of flights from the UK to Azerbaijan and 83 per cent of flights from Britain to Kazakhstan carried fewer than 50 passengers. Does an empty cabin make swapping a beach resort for Kazakhstan worthwhile? That’s for you to decide.

A game of ‘tag’

Then there’s the existence of what Harteveldt called “tag” routes. “These are the continuation of a route from an airline’s home base or hub, where they are less known and where their load factors may be lower,” he explained. “There aren’t too many of these left, since aircraft now have better range, and it’s expensive to operate these flights (if it’s a long-haul route, there’s likely a crew change required, and the various crews will of course have to have an adequate rest period between their flights). Sydney-Christchurch, offered by Emirates, is one example, likely a tag on Dubai-Sydney. A friend of mine just flew this service and was the only passenger in the premium cabin.

“I also believe KLM flies between Buenos Aires and Santiago, a continuation of the airline’s Amsterdam-Buenos Aires route. Likewise, it operates an Amsterdam-Singapore flight that continues to Bali. And Air France operates Los Angeles-Tahiti as a tag from one of its Paris-Los Angeles flights.”

‘Vanity’ flights

Once upon a time, airlines operated some routes simply for prestige. If your arch rival flies London to JFK, so must you – never mind the empty seats and financial losses. Politics can play a part, too. In 2015 it was even alleged that United launched flights from Newark to Columbia, South Carolina, as a favour to the former chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Then there are unprofitable routes kept open thanks to government subsidies (in Australia, these service some of the country’s more remote locations).

These are now few and far between. “However, airlines will run extra flights between key hubs as a defensive tactic,” said Ott. “There are many times a year when airlines will run multiple daily flights to, say, Santorini, just to offer more choice, even though they can’t actually really sell all the available seats. Being able to offer that choice is designed to capture more bookings and win across the entire day. This is common on routes like London-Dubai, where frequency is important.”

Ott added that disruption often creates the empty-flight scenarios that garner headlines: “I’ve experienced them myself during irregular operations, when a flight had been cancelled or heavily delayed and only a few stragglers remained and ended up on the plane.” Every cloud has a silver lining.

So you’ve booked your flight to Kazakhstan, flying on Christmas Day, with the most unsociable departure time available – can you find out in advance how busy the cabin will be?

“It’s difficult to know how full or empty your flight may be,” said Harteveldt. “You can’t really go by the seat map for your flight, because seat maps don’t reflect the number of reservations, only the number of people who have selected a seat at that moment. Remember that airlines may charge to reserve a seat before flight check-in opens. As a result, passengers may wait to select their seats when check-in opens and they can choose their seat for free.”

Ott added: “I used to use a tool called ExpertFlyer to look up live seat maps and outfox people to grab the right seats in economy to get a whole row. The better hack now is to be among the last to board and to ask the gate agent if there’s any gaps in seating you can take advantage of.”

What happens on an empty flight

So you’ve hit the ghost-flight jackpot – now what? You’ll have plenty of room for your bag in the overhead bin, a more attentive cabin crew (on the Jet2 flight mentioned earlier, the cabin crew kept referring to their only passenger as “King Paul” while the American Airlines flyer was given “all the food and drink I wanted”), and fewer people coughing, snoring and hanging around in the aisle with their backside in your face.

And surely an upgrade to business class? Think again. Just because those seats up front are empty, don’t assume the cabin crew will offer you one. That was the case with Kimmy Chedel and Zoe Doyle last Christmas, when the premium seats on their Emirates flight remained off limits. And when Kai Forsyth from Derbyshire was the only passenger onboard a BA flight from Heathrow to Orlando in January 2022, he too was denied the pleasure of a premium seat and forced to make do with turning his economy-class row into a makeshift bed. Not quite the private-jet experience, but an improvement nonetheless.

The Telegraph, London

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