When I lived in NJ United ran a flight from Trenton that stopped at Harrisburg and then on to Chicago. They flew a 727 and the first leg often had under five people. The problem was that return flights would often get canceled because they claimed the runway lights were out. (Someone probably threw a switch.) The flight got scratched eventually. Which was too bad because Trenton had free parking.
I’ve flown on a plane with only three or four other passengers, but it was a private jet, and only took maybe 8-10 people total anyway, so I don’t think that probably counts for much.
Joey P, I’m curious about the flight a few days after 9/11. Weren’t the skies closed for like a week after?
I flew on a plane where the only other person on board was the pilot; however, it was a 4 seater so it worked out to about 50%
I have been on a several flights with under 20 people on a 737, but it dosent happen very often these days. The most recent time was about two years ago, flying from LAX to SLC on a midnight run. I wanted a beer but the flight crew had no change, so the flight attendant said it was on the house. After I finished it, she brought me another cold one without me even asking for it, which I felt was very thoughtful of her.
I flew to Berlin less than a month after 9/11, and the flight was less than a quarter full, which I suppose under the circumstances was not too surprising.
Shortly after coming back home to the US, I threw out a crazy-lowball Priceline bid on a flight from Salt Lake to Philadelphia (Bob Dylan was playing the Spectrum) and got a R/T ticket for $45, TOTAL. Those flights were nearly empty as well.
The Dylan concert ticket was the same price as my entire roundtrip airfare cost…
I took a red eye from SFO to Hartford the first night of the airstrikes during the Gulf War - don’t recall the exact date, but it was late January, 1991.
Not only was my flight practically empty - anyone who was on the flight had an entire row to themselves - but SFO was a weird ghost town like I’d never seen it. The few people there were crowded in the airport bars, watching the missle strikes in silence on the TVs, otherwise all the hallways and gates were empty except for security personnel.
I had an interview with the Forestry Extension program at MSU.
Hey, was that Mercer County Airport? I lived almost literally right across the street. My dad was a reguar at the airport bar, I believe it was called the General’s Quarters…
Joe
Mine’s pretty close: a company 10-seater from Indianapolis to Chicago back when the earth was still cooling.
Including the pilot, there were three of us on board. He told us where the drinks and snacks were and to help ourselves. 
That’s the one. I lived in Pennington, and wished I could always fly out of there, since it sure beat driving 50 miles to either Newark or Philadelphia.
I always wondered how that bar stayed in business. It wasn’t ever one of my top dining choices.
flying from tampa to boston during the first week of january a few years back. it was a normal sized plane, so a 747 or whatever. i was one of about 10 people aboard, it was great.
In my final days as a student, I took a flight from San Diego to Santa Barbara for a job interview. It was a puddle jumper and I was the only one on the flight. The pilots and flight attendant were teasing me like I was a big wig on my own private jet. “Your plane is ready, Sir.” “Is the temperature OK back there?”
Last month on a SouthWest flight from Philly to Boston there must have been no more than twenty people on the plane which, I believe, was a 737. The plane was practically empty. SouthWest doesn’t assign seats, at least they haven’t on the flights I’ve taken with them, so I walked in and chose one of the many rows that were vacant. It was like heaven.
The first flight I took after September 11th (9/20/2001) was rather empty. I don’t remember the type of plane or how many people, but it was not crowded and the whole airport was very quiet. I’ve also been on two flights betwen Hawaiian islands and those are done with very small planes. They might’ve had fewer people than that flight in 2001, but they didn’t feel as empty.
One of my dad’s friends was a Concorde pilot. He took one from Heathrow to JFK with 2 passengers on board. I don’t think it was a scheduled flight though, some charter needed to meet passengers off the QEII
Sometime in the 1970s, soon after World Airways was first flying coast-to-coast for $100, my World flight back from LAX to whichever DC airport (probably Dulles) that we were flying into had maybe a dozen or so passengers. I slept much of the flight stretched out across three seats, and there was nobody around to mind.
I was on an Air Canada Jazz flight from Ottawa to Washingon IAD during the prior decade. This was a CRJ regional jet and it didn’t have more than 5 passengers.
Flying back from Ho Chi Minh City to Australia with about 30-40 people. Our connecting flight from Hanoi was delayed, and I think they put a whole extra plane on just for us. Someone had the seat next to me, but after take-off we all spread out. The air crew didn’t treat us any different than normal.
I once flew from JFK to LAX on a mostly empty plane. Having just gotten off a flight from Tel Aviv, I was pretty out of it and don’t know precisely how many other people were on the plane. But it was few enough that I got an entire row to myself, which was great and let me sleep through nearly the entire flight - exactly what I needed.
I flew from Copenhagen to LA with maybe 8 passengers. It was on a plane that was being sent to pick up the Swedish soccer/football team from LA after the 3rd place game of the 1994 World Cup. It was a flight that was added just a couple of days before. I was in Prague and happened by an SAS office, so I decided to see if I could move my flight home up by a few days and got lucky.
It was awesome. They let us sit wherever we wanted. Two of us who were flying alone sat in first class and a larger group with a baby took the back of the plane (thankfully) and the crew gave us anything we wanted. Best flight ever.
A Melbourne-Sydney flight on Easter Sunday night about ten years ago. I can’t remember now the exact number of passengers, but it was fewer then ten.