Load factor calculation
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Load factor calculation
Right, for the amusement and delectation of the amassed PPRuNe brains trust, here's the "dumb spotter question" du jour.
I'm assuming that load factors are only calculated by counting filled seats on flights that actually depart. So, in that case, how will the current disruption impact on the reported LF's for European airlines who have just spent the best part of a week at full capacity to get their "stranded" passengers to their destinations?
JAS
I'm assuming that load factors are only calculated by counting filled seats on flights that actually depart. So, in that case, how will the current disruption impact on the reported LF's for European airlines who have just spent the best part of a week at full capacity to get their "stranded" passengers to their destinations?
JAS
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Not a 'dumb spotter' question at all and just to throw into the pot the fact that an awful lot of flights that returned full last week actually went out empty which should also enter the equation.
I do not think there will be any accurate load factors for the month of April.
I do not think there will be any accurate load factors for the month of April.
spotter - to make it a little more complicated, not all airlines define load factor in the same way. Consider the case of a non-refundable ticket - if the passenger doesn't show up for the flight the airline still gets to keep the revenue. Should this be included in load factor or not ? Of course one can add a 'fudge factor' when definitions are different, but it makes comparison of load factors between airlines rather less transparent than might be hoped...
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I was only thinking about this topic earlier on today. Makes for good debate. If flights are flying out empty aren't they dead heading so surely they're not considered an actual flight? So therefore no load factor would be considered. However, in most cases out and in bound flights surely wouldve been full cos people were stranded at both ends of every route. Am I making sense? Long day and tired. Hope this thread goes for a while. Would like read others' opinions.
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Load factor Calc
Load Factor Calc is quite easy: number of physical seats compared with flown/booked (forcasting based on booked, flown if you do it for a flown period) head counts (adults and children). So some flights this month were rather empty due to positioning, and some flights were pretty full. Due to the volcano weekend the load factors will not be really useful. Load factors do not care about revenue or non-revenue or noshow or offloads. There are revenue calculations (per seat, per mile, per kilometer, per aircraft, etc.) which do use total revenue and revenue passengers - that gives you the Yield.
I expect to see a more or less normal load factor, but revenue will be down. Yield most probably as well and due to the higher secondary cost the profit will be much lower - if there's any at all.
Wrap up: if a passenger with a non-refundable and non-changeable ticket does not fly - it's not going to affect the load factor (hmm .. it affects it coz 1 pax less on board - so a lower load factor) - but unflown revenue.
@EISNN: yes of course you are right ... the positioning/dead head flights do not count in the calculation of the load unless they are flown based on the standard schedule - just without pax. Thus what I wrote above is not 100% correct and depends how the airlines do classify such a flight.
I expect to see a more or less normal load factor, but revenue will be down. Yield most probably as well and due to the higher secondary cost the profit will be much lower - if there's any at all.
Wrap up: if a passenger with a non-refundable and non-changeable ticket does not fly - it's not going to affect the load factor (hmm .. it affects it coz 1 pax less on board - so a lower load factor) - but unflown revenue.
@EISNN: yes of course you are right ... the positioning/dead head flights do not count in the calculation of the load unless they are flown based on the standard schedule - just without pax. Thus what I wrote above is not 100% correct and depends how the airlines do classify such a flight.
Last edited by rolibkk; 24th Apr 2010 at 06:58.
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22 years ago
I was on the last britannia flight from Hong Kong some 22 years ago - I think that was a 742. 3 standby pax and the crew. Conclusion: low load factor, zero revenue.
While thinking of load factors .. if a flight is full and id pax are seated on jump seats - the load factor would be above 100% coz jump seats are not used in the calculation of actual seats... 19 years ago from Shanghai to Heathrow on a jump seat - good old times.
While thinking of load factors .. if a flight is full and id pax are seated on jump seats - the load factor would be above 100% coz jump seats are not used in the calculation of actual seats... 19 years ago from Shanghai to Heathrow on a jump seat - good old times.
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Stranded Pax
I think it depends very much on the route as to whether the numbers stranded at each end were roughly equal. On routes like UK to Sharm-el-Sheik you would expect almost all the traffic to be originating in and returning to the UK, and the eruption happened just at the end of the Easter school holidays so there would in any case be more people expected to return than travel outwards. On this sort of route a lot of passengers expecting to depart the UK would have given up altogether and taken the refund or rebooked for later in the year.
Inbound tourism to the UK is all-year-round, but April is by no means high season for it, especially from North America.
On routes with more business and "visiting friends and relations" passengers it would be different. Here the problem in the early stages of resuming flights would be getting the stranded passengers to the airport once the pool of people found hotels by the airline had been dealt with, they might need connecting flights from elsewhere which hadn't themselves restarted yet or were full, or lengthy journeys by land transport so couldn't get there in time to catch the first flight offered. Anecdotally there were indeed empty long haul seats outbound from major hub airports such as Heathrow and Amsterdam. It would be helpful to the discussion if this could be confirmed or denied by people who flew or handled such flights in the last few days.
Inbound tourism to the UK is all-year-round, but April is by no means high season for it, especially from North America.
On routes with more business and "visiting friends and relations" passengers it would be different. Here the problem in the early stages of resuming flights would be getting the stranded passengers to the airport once the pool of people found hotels by the airline had been dealt with, they might need connecting flights from elsewhere which hadn't themselves restarted yet or were full, or lengthy journeys by land transport so couldn't get there in time to catch the first flight offered. Anecdotally there were indeed empty long haul seats outbound from major hub airports such as Heathrow and Amsterdam. It would be helpful to the discussion if this could be confirmed or denied by people who flew or handled such flights in the last few days.
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Ok, so a 235 seater has 50 non-refundable tickets and 25 of these are no shows. The Airline then sells the 25 "empty" seats to stand-by passengers, would this make this LF 106%.
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Ok, so a 235 seater has 50 non-refundable tickets and 25 of these are no shows. The Airline then sells the 25 "empty" seats to stand-by passengers, would this make this LF 106%
Institutional carriers such as BA, LH, AF etc. often oversell flights as they expect passengers to not turn up.
Remember, the way on this site we use load factor to calculate passenger demand. This is obviously very inaccurate considering all routes have different price elasticity of demand (e.g. LHR-JFK is very much closer to 0 than BLK-ALC)
Load factor is very irrelevant now in such a competitive market.
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Hi all,
The definition of load factor isn't necessarily tied to seats alone. We must also consider the distance flown in order to measure the production of the airline.
ASK = No. of seats/aircraft * No. of aircraft * agregrate distance flown
RSK = Total Number of Passengers * Distance Flown
Load Factor = Revenue Seat Kilometers / Available Seat Kilometers
Available seat kilometers is a measure of the production of an airline and the Revenue Seat Kilometers is a measure of how much of that production was consumption.
Simple example: -
Route: - ABC -> XYZ
Distance = 200km
Aircraft = 2
Seats / Aircraft = 50
Total Services per day = 8
Available seat kilometers = 200 * 2 * 50 * 8 = 160000 km
Assume on day 1 there were a total of 560 passengers travelling.
Revenue Seat Kilometers = 560 * 200 = 112000 km
Load Factor = 112000/160000 = 0.7 or 70%
In reality an airline will then do this equation for each route to determine the route load factor to help in route planning. The figures quoted in public are generally relating to the aggregate sums so it would represent total revenue seat kilometers / total available seat kilometers.
All the best,
P2C
The definition of load factor isn't necessarily tied to seats alone. We must also consider the distance flown in order to measure the production of the airline.
ASK = No. of seats/aircraft * No. of aircraft * agregrate distance flown
RSK = Total Number of Passengers * Distance Flown
Load Factor = Revenue Seat Kilometers / Available Seat Kilometers
Available seat kilometers is a measure of the production of an airline and the Revenue Seat Kilometers is a measure of how much of that production was consumption.
Simple example: -
Route: - ABC -> XYZ
Distance = 200km
Aircraft = 2
Seats / Aircraft = 50
Total Services per day = 8
Available seat kilometers = 200 * 2 * 50 * 8 = 160000 km
Assume on day 1 there were a total of 560 passengers travelling.
Revenue Seat Kilometers = 560 * 200 = 112000 km
Load Factor = 112000/160000 = 0.7 or 70%
In reality an airline will then do this equation for each route to determine the route load factor to help in route planning. The figures quoted in public are generally relating to the aggregate sums so it would represent total revenue seat kilometers / total available seat kilometers.
All the best,
P2C
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Bear in mind also that "booked load factor" is not the same as "flown load factor". Ryanair (bless them) when talking about load factors always quotes something called "earned load factor", i.e. the % of seats which would be occupied if everyone who'd bought a ticket turned up (same as what is normally known as "booked load factor"). Obviously this considerably flatters their load factor number. Most other airlines (network airlines at least) would cite flown load factor, not booked load factor, when quoting a load factor figure.
(And just to be pedantic - we are talking about passenger load factor only, i.e. cabin factor. The load factor calculation is sometimes done for both passengers and cargo, so if the 747's passenger cabin is 75% full and its cargo hold is 60% full, the overall load factor is... well, you get the idea. But almost all of the time that load factor is referred to these days it means passenger load factor.)
(And just to be pedantic - we are talking about passenger load factor only, i.e. cabin factor. The load factor calculation is sometimes done for both passengers and cargo, so if the 747's passenger cabin is 75% full and its cargo hold is 60% full, the overall load factor is... well, you get the idea. But almost all of the time that load factor is referred to these days it means passenger load factor.)
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Seat load factor or weight load factor?
Seat load factor, in my book at least, is Revenue Passenger Kilometres (RPK) over Available Seat Kilometres (ASK) times 100. RPK is the number of revenue passengers multiplied by the distance each one flies. Revenue passengers include everyone except infants not occupying a seat, and staff pax regardless of their level of discount. Passengers flying free on frequent flyer redemptions do count. ASK is based on saleable seats, not necessarily the number physically fitted. Distances are Great Circle, between the airports involved.
Weight load factor is Revenue Tonne-Km (RTK) divided by Available Tonne-Km. That can be rather more complicated to calculate - but it's up to the airline to come up with how it determines passenger weights.
Doing it this way, with distance as part of the equation, means that you can calculate l/f for a single sector, for a multi-sector flight or across a whole network.
Seat load factor, in my book at least, is Revenue Passenger Kilometres (RPK) over Available Seat Kilometres (ASK) times 100. RPK is the number of revenue passengers multiplied by the distance each one flies. Revenue passengers include everyone except infants not occupying a seat, and staff pax regardless of their level of discount. Passengers flying free on frequent flyer redemptions do count. ASK is based on saleable seats, not necessarily the number physically fitted. Distances are Great Circle, between the airports involved.
Weight load factor is Revenue Tonne-Km (RTK) divided by Available Tonne-Km. That can be rather more complicated to calculate - but it's up to the airline to come up with how it determines passenger weights.
Doing it this way, with distance as part of the equation, means that you can calculate l/f for a single sector, for a multi-sector flight or across a whole network.
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Total number of revenue passengers / total number of seats x 100%
You don't need to worry about distances in this case (they cancel out).
Scourge of Bad Airline Management!
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I once flew back on some variety of 737 from BRU to BHX with BA, and I was the total payload... apart from the crew, who were very attentive 
Still can't figure out why I was refused a window seat at check in, mind...
TA
Still can't figure out why I was refused a window seat at check in, mind...
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I once flew on a 747 with only 9 other passengers. Off topic, I know, but I wonder if anyone has experience of a flight with a lower load factor?