"Ghost Flights"

[clareview]

We need to distinguish between ghost flights and positioning flights.

A positioning flight is when a plane is needed somewhere else from where it currently is. The best example is probably with an airline like Titan which steps in when other airlines have problems. So, for example, lets say a companies aircraft develops a fault at Manchester and that company asks Titan to help. Titan has to position its plane from its Stansted base to Manchester in order to fulfill this commitment. No doubt positioning costs are factored in to the quote for the work. Similarly if a base only needs a plane for part of the week based on demand, the airline has 2 choices - leave it sitting for the rest of the week costing money or move it for a number of days to somewhere where it can carry passengers and make some money. A further example is BA positioning a plane from Heathrow to its maintenance base at Cardiff.

Ghost flights are when an airline operates flights simply to meet an agreement to keep a route going or when it is in danger of loosing a slot due to not currently using it, The bmi example to Cardiff is fairly well known but BA did it in the past both with its own planes and, I recall, with a B1900 and perhaps an ATR belonging to a German company called Avanti. Both examples were to secure ownership of slots until they were needed for proper services.