I was flying back from Salt Lake City and stupidly took the last flight to LA. The plane was delayed from Denver, so I managed to miss my connecting flight to Santa Barbara. Being the cheap bastard I am, I just slept at LAX and caught the 7AM flight to SBA where there was 3 passengers on a 31 seat puddle jumper. While this is not particularly impressive (9.7%), it was the lowest percentage occupancy flight that I can remember being on.
I’ve heard of solitary passengers on a 747 before. What was the least occupied flight that you’ve been a passenger on?
I flew from Singapore to Hong Kong on a 747 that had 8 people on it. There were 6 of us in Coach and 2 in First Class. From what I heard, the continuing flight from Hong Kong to the U.S. was pretty much full.
In the U.S., I flew from Phoenix to Dallas on a big plane that only had 4 people on it. I am not sure of the plane, but it was not a “puddle jumper”. It was a DC-10 or MD-80 or some such. The flight had originated in Los Angeles around midnight and stopped in Phoenix for about 4 hours. Have you ever wandered around the Phoenix airport at 3 AM? I do not recommend it.
I once flew from London to Amsterdam in a 777 (or 767) that was around 10% full. I guess the airline (united) neaded the plane in Amsterdam, because normally they use far smaller planes for these distances.
I flew from Jordan to Baghdad on a small Airserve flight (about 30 seats). We landed in Erbil, everyone got off except me, no one got on; and I flew from Erbil to Baghdad by myself. They still did the demonstration of seat belt, etc.
I flew from Cape Town to London on a 747 with 57 people on board. This happened on Christmas Day.
There was one guy in First Class who must have felt like a right idiot when he saw that every passenger in economy had 3 or 4 seats on which to stretch out on and sleep.
I don’t recall the details, but it was a 737-class type plane with at least 15 empty seats to each used one. I don’t think anything abnormal had happened (bad weather delaying connecting flights or anything.) It was just one of those things.
The flight attendants somehow decided that they needed to give away the wine and stuff. So they had a contest. The people with the oldest pennies got a free bottle of wine. Me, like a bunch of others, didn’t care to participate. So they still had excess wine bottles and one tried and tried to get me to take one, perhaps to give to someone. No, I don’t drink. I don’t encourage others to drink. I’m not taking the bottle so go away.
My dad flew to Vegas (from Milwaukee) two or three days after 9/11. It was a ‘normal’ sized plane, so 747/757, I think he said there was 7 people on it.
30 years ago or so, I regularly flew the Western Airlines red-eye between Anchorage and Seattle. Usually one-third full or less every trip. That would occasionally get me a bump to First Class, since I knew several of the ramp agents. When that happened, I was always the only person in First Class. I think they just wanted to give that stewardess something to do that flight.
I was on a Northwest flight from Boston to Detroit about 15 years ago. It was on an A320, and I strongly suspected that I was the only passenger on board. I certainly didn’t see anyone else at the gate or in the cabin while I was boarding, but it was possible someone else might have boarded later and I didn’t notice. It was a normal weekday flight in the mid-morning, so I don’t know why it was so empty, because it seems to me that this should be a busy sector. I was young at the time and a little shy and didn’t think of asking the flight attendants what was going on.
The first few times I flew commercially, back in the 80’s, going to and from Europe for work. On almost every flight I got a full row of 4 seats, in the middle, to myself so I could stretch out and sleep. Sometimes I was forced to get by with only 3 seats on the side. So spoiled that I can’t even fly these days without frustration welling up.
About 25 years ago, I was the sole passenger on a flight between Lexington KY and Winston-Salem, NC…this was after the larger airport in neighboring Greensboro had taken over the bulk of the air traffic.
And it was on a plane that would typically seat about 150 - 200 people, this was before the days of the regional jets.
It was strange, I was seated at the gate wondering why no one else was at the gate…an airline employee came over to the gate and checked me in. I boarded and disboarded through the back with the crew.
And they did do the whole apeech and seatbelt demo, etc…the flight attendant did it all in the singular which was funny…“We would like to welcome our passenger aboard flight numbe 123…”
My personal record is carrying 1 passenger on an airplane with 12 first class and 134 coach seats. That’s a 0.68% load factor as we say in the trade.
The 4 flight attendants were bored and took real good care of the guy. We told him he could have any seat except the spare ones in the cockpit. He picked the left aisle seat in the second row of first class. So now you know the best seat in the house.
I’ve ferried airplanes now and then with zero passengers, but I don’t think I’ve ever operated a scheduled departure with zero. if I did though, there’d be nobody to claim he/she’d been a passenger on a flight with zero passengers. There’s sort of a Catch-22 there.
Ref Joey P and post-9/11 … I flew one of our first few flights after things restarted on 9/16 or whenever it was. We were almost full. As were most of the flights that day. Not saying his anecdote didn’t happen as he describes, just that it wasn’t common. All our pax were real glad to be getting where they were going after (IIRC) 4 days sitting.
We flew in and out of Newark the following month - Mid October - for a wedding. The flight was about half full.
My guess is that the first week was pretty busy with folks trying to get home - but that a week later, no one was flying unless they needed to.
That was the last flight I was on that was anything close to empty. Every flight I’ve been on since the time immediately following 9/11 has been pretty full - most overfull.
I flew from Toyko to Bangkok in the 1980s with about six people.
I was the only passenger on a turbo-prop puddle jumper from Starkville, Mississippi to Atlanta, Georgia. I was asked to sit in very back row to help balance the plane. That was fine with me as the back row had a center seat so I could recline and push my feet out into the aisle. The attendant apologised to me that due to federal law she had to do the seat belt and oxygen mask thing. Later in the flight she came back with a cup of coffee and a tin of homemade cookies and explained that she normally didn’t share cookies with passengers, but also that she normally didn’t fly just one person to Atlanta. Fun flight.
On the evening of 12/31/1999 I flew from Chicago to Nashville. Volume was light because not only was it New Year’s Eve, but everyone was spooked by Y2K. The ticket was dirt cheap and there were only six of us, plus the crew. We got complimentary champaigne.
Ottawa, Ontario to Lahr, Germany in what was probably a B767 in 1992 - there was probably no more than 20 people on board, and 4 of those were me and my family. I don’t know who the operator was (probably Air Canada since it’s the flag carrier), but this was a flight being run by the DND to get military personnel and dependents back to the base in Lahr. Since the announcement had already occurred that the base would be closing the following year, the plane was only transporting people who had returned to Canada on vacation, rather than the usual full load of new postings.
It was fun. We all spread out and took our own rows, and everyone was very friendly. One woman let me use her Game Boy while she slept, though I don’t remember what I played.
So spoiled that I can’t even fly these days without frustration welling up.