How many Pax is it worth to operate the flight?

[BYALPHAINDIA]

Thinking the past few days, With this 'Constant' Doom & Gloom what percentage would the Airlines Sales/Operations think it to be worthwile looking at operating a flight?

For example a J41 ?

Or a A321 ?

Obviously these schedules are normally booked up months in advance, But with people's job security at the highest risk at present, People will be now booking last minute flights/late deals a week or even days before due to their finances available.

How will the Sales/Marketing teams plan for all these late bookings?

Will Rosters be done 2 weeks before instead of 4/6 weeks?

I can see 'Organisational Chaos' on the Horizon!

[TopBunk]

Don't forget that you can break even on freight alone on some routes - it frequently pays more per kg than slf.

I think also that you need to distinguish between scheduled flights and charter. A larger part of running a scheduled airline is scheduled regularity, and indeed if you don't operate a certain percentage of the schedule you may be in danger of losing the slots.

Your regular business passengers expect you to operate, and if you don't then they may not book with you next time.

For sure, on some routes with multiple and regular frequencies, then strategic cancellations may well be warranted, and even announced to passengers some weeks in advance, in which case the rostering processes may well reflect the schedule changes. For ad hoc changes on the day due flight consolidation due lateness etc, then crews will normally transfer to local standby etc.

Difficult times, difficult decisions ... but frequent last minute cancellations are the start of a slippery slope for scheduled carriers imho.

[BOAC]

Also do not forget there may be a need for the a/c and or crew to be at the destination for the next planned task. Eg light load on last outbound to X but overbooked on the early morning return.

[Desert Diner]

You reduce scheduled frequency and/or capacity and not specific flights with a low load factor. That is a guaranteed way to reduce loads even further.