Cancelled - Empty Flight?

Could not find this topic anywhere, but do VS cancel flights if they are empty?
Looking at VS9 on 24th January I may have PE to myself! Expert flyers' seat map seems to indicate that the flight is virtually empty.
I understand VS cannot cancel a once a day service like IAD or SYD but as there are 6 flights daily to New York if the numbers are low do they cancel the flight and put pax on another one?

-Steve

Have never heard of that before but ISTBC...

VS.

Wouldn't that also mean cancelling the flight the other way too, or there would be no plane to use for it, so I doubt they'd cancel it and there's still plenty of time to sell seats!

[Scrooge]

You need to also factor in that airlines make a lot of $$$ on cargo, on some routes VS will make more from the cargo the planes carry than the pax.

flight appears very quiet, the inbound is busier tho. The only reason it would be cancelled is if an aircraft was tech they needed a spare... apart from that we do sometimes have very light loads to new york and a wed night in january is about the quietest time for VS i would think - worst that happens is you go on the 25 a couple of hours later, wouldnt worry about it!

Originally posted by Stevieboy
Could not find this topic anywhere, but do VS cancel flights if they are empty?
Looking at VS9 on 24th January I may have PE to myself! Expert flyers' seat map seems to indicate that the flight is virtually empty.
I understand VS cannot cancel a once a day service like IAD or SYD but as there are 6 flights daily to New York if the numbers are low do they cancel the flight and put pax on another one?

-Steve

I travelled on the VS9 back in October 2006. There were no more than around 15 pax in the PE cabin. It was the emptiest PE cabin I had been in for years. There were around 80+ pax on the aircraft and the flight still went. I wonder if the VS9 is making VS any profit?

It depends upon exactly what you mean by "if the VS9 is making VS any profit?". It's not only passengers that go on the aircraft, there's lots of cargo too, and also courier.

In August last year I worked on a VS flight to NY which had very few passengers (only 2 baggage bins, so probably less than 100 pax), but the hold(s) were full of cargo. Either VS had a lot of cargo to shift and were using this flight to catch up with the backlog, or the flight _had_ to operate because the return sector was full. Or maybe a mixture of both.

Biggles, I admit I think in pax terms only. I never really give any thought to cargo etc when I'm sitting on an aircraft. Taking into account all the other criteria you mentioned, would VS fly an aircraft with say, only 30 pax on it, but a full cargo load and a full return sector?

Originally posted by MrsG
Biggles, I admit I think in pax terms only. I never really give any thought to cargo etc when I'm sitting on an aircraft. Taking into account all the other criteria you mentioned, would VS fly an aircraft with say, only 30 pax on it, but a full cargo load and a full return sector?

With both a good cargo and a full return, combined with the potential comp to the 30 pax, I suspect the answer would almost certainly have to be yes.

[mitchja]

Cargo makes more money for the airlines per cubic metre than passengers do. Plus they dont have to feed and water cargo either [:w]

We ship at lot of goods via air freight where I work. If we want to send a 1 Kg sample of material we make (chemicals) and it's classed as dangerous goods (which most of our material is) it costs us approx £250 to send just that 1 Kg sample so that's about the same as a sale economy fare to the US. Sending a 200Kg drum of the same material is obviously a lot more expensive than that. Certain chemicals cannot even be loaded onto a passenger aircraft so they have to go on a cargo only flight.

Air freight is costly and requires a lot of admin work but it's by far the quickest means to get your product to the customer.

Regards

Thanks guys, think I understand now

Cargo makes more money for the airlines per cubic metre than passengers do. Plus they dont have to feed and water cargo either

Never gave the cargo aspect of the flight any thought really.

Bit of a follow up question, do they still staff the aircraft the same regardless of passenger loads?

-Steve

Originally posted by Stevieboy
Bit of a follow up question, do they still staff the aircraft the same regardless of passenger loads?

There will be a minimum number of crew legally required to operate the flight, which in the case of VS will be set by the CAA, though these are generally harmonised globally.

VS will generally set staff levels at a higher number for a few reasons, including to maintain levels of service in the various classes, and to provide some level of "slack" above the minimum crew number in case of sickness (sickness downline can be very unfortunate, as you will have no reserve crew at a downline station).

Remember that even if your outbound flight is only lightly loaded, the crew will be working a return trip as part of their roster. Maybe their return trip is a completely full plane, and so would need a full crew?

That said, I have been on trips where both the crew and the loads have been sparse, and that's usually happened because the airline expect loads in both directions to be light.

Even when that happens, the flight may have been "normally rostered" for a full crew, and on the day, another flight has been short of crew, and therefore crew get reassigned from the quieter trip that can spare a crew-member or two to help out on the flight which is short crewed.

Hope that helps.
Mike

I've been on some VS flights with very light loads, but the flights seem to have operated with a full crew.

VS.