Avoiding Crowded Flights: The Full-Capacity Nightmare
The first time I ever went to Hawaii, I remember very specifically walking down to the beach, lying down, closing my eyes, and trying to relax. I say “trying” because shortly after I closed my eyes and relaxed a little bit, I heard sounds that I shouldn’t have been hearing. I heard people, cars, construction equipment, children screaming, boats whining… I thought, “I can do this on a beach in Texas, for pity sakes. The second time I went to Hawaii, I did some research and found a resort on a much more secluded portion of a more secluded island and, repeating the same exercise, I heard waves crashing, an occasional seabird, and eventually a turtle as it crawled up to bask in the sun. Life is so much better when you take the crowd away.
One of my faithful readers also wants to take the crowd away. Rod emailed and asked, “Dear Ken, How can we find out the occupancy rate of the airline’s routes and flights so we can book flights with the least number of passengers?" That, Rod, is the best question any reader has asked me in several months. I have my own methods but that question was so good, it prompted me to do more than a little bit of research to see if there was a website or a single source of truth to go to find such gold. I even called the Platinum resource hotline from Delta. I have good news and I have bad news.
The Bad News: While there are many websites that detail “The most popular routes for air travel,” they’re not very helpful when it comes to booking a ticket. For example, Atlanta to New York is a very popular route (I have no idea why), but the specific airlines that fly it and their capacity for passengers aren’t mentioned. London to Singapore is another popular one, but I really wouldn’t care if I were seated on an Airbus A380 with the capacity to hold 525 people and there were only 400 on the flight. Too many variables figure into the equation for any one source to give us an answer. Time of year, type of aircraft, time of day, special ticket deals, current events in the destination city, and airport availability are all important factors to consider. What we really want to know is, “How full is my flight on this airplane going to be if I book the ticket today for this airport and this date?” There’s not a website in the world who can answer that for you. Besides, in this economic downturn, airlines have cut every possible flight that they can that ever ran less than about 75% of its capacity.
The Good News: While there may not be publicly available places that provide this information, there are people and other sources that can. If you book through an agent, always ask prior to booking, “What’s the capacity look like for that flight?” They can look at seating charts and tell immediately if a plane looks chock full or half empty. Most corporate travel software can do that for you, too. I know that Carlson Wagonlit software does. Aside from that, you can always use common sense. If you live in Minnesota and you have to fly to Orlando on business, and it’s the middle of July, guess what? You’ll be sitting alongside a packed airplane loaded with children on summer vacation to Disney World. In that situation, you’d want to pick the latest flight of the day since most families want to arrive earlier so they can herd the kids to the hotel, etc. Check your local city for planned events. I happened to have to fly to Boston during the week of the Marathon once. In hindsight, I’d have seriously considered flying into Philadelphia and taking a train to Boston instead. The plane, the airport, taxi stands, etc, were a zoo. Some cities are always busy and it seems that the flights in and out of them are always packed. San Francisco and New York are good examples. In this case, your strategy is to pick the least popular airport. Flying into Oakland is frequently less popular than flying directly into SFO. Flying into Newark is less crowded than flying into La Guardia (although, you’ll have to take a train from Jersey into the city, it’s still worth it if you want to avoid a packed airplane).
I’m old enough to remember the days when the airlines would route empty planes to different cities in order to make certain schedules. I flew home all by myself one time on a red-eye out of Los Angeles on Halloween night back in 1989. It was me and a crew of 4 flight attendants. They opened the beverage cart, offered me free booze, and we had a HELL of a flight home! Those days are over, my friend, long over. Today, it’s all about “butts in seats” and I’ve seen flights cancel for the sole reason that there weren’t enough people checked in to justify the fuel costs. It was cheaper to rebook them on the next flight and pack the next plane full. Get used to it!
EXTRA: If you have questions for Ken regarding business travel, hotels, airplanes, etc, please call 1-877-49-EXPERT. Your questions will be recorded and Ken will answer the best ones in his Ask the Expert podcast show.
