First holiday flights of summer return leg question

[munrobagger]

I have often wondered if these carry passengers or if airlines bother - for example first return flight to any UK airport from - say - Rhodes or Menorca or Faro . Are there any issues if there are just a handful of pax ?

Just curious

Stanley

[BOAC]

Most often empty and enjoyable with crew on tea trays in the aisle and..........enough............

[WHBM]

The "traditonal" holiday charter carriers, who have lost out over recent years to the low-fare operators with more balanced flows, have long been very adept in finding means to minimse empty legs. Having the Mediterranean summer charters begin just as the ski season is ending helps; around Easter there can be triangular trips, say Manchester-Palma-Geneva-Manchester, whch take out the first summer tourists and bring back the last skiers, with only the middle leg being empty.

In addition to the holidaymaker pax, there is also the need to get reps and resort managers out at the start of the season and back at the end, which can require some enhancement of seats.

Any charter operator has inefficiency to absorb by the nature of their less-regular operations, whch is why, when someone has say a group of 200 to move as a one-off, they can be surprised to find it is more expensive than regular flights, because there is no backload available. Military charters are a particular case in point.

[zarniwoop]

A lot of the holiday companies used to offer cheap holidays to the travel agents for the week before the season opened properly, brother managed to get us a few cheap ski trips that way, bus out and flight back.

Quite a lot of the people taking up the offer would actually use it as a way of subsidising a two week trip, out of four or five coaches going out there would be about two taking people to the airport for the return journey.

[jedigtr]

Many years ago I was fortunate to be invited to fly on the flightdeck of a DanAir 727 from Gatwick to Ibiza, the plan was to fly out full and come back empty but as it happened the Monarch flight parked next to us at Ibiza was overbooked and 2 pax would have to be left behind. The Dans captain was asked if he would be willing to carry them and he said yes, so these 2 pax jumped on board and had the whole cabin to themselves.

[michaelmedley]

I spent 2 Years working overseas as a rep and well aware of these legs for flights....

Our flights out to summer season are around the 1st/2nd week of April with the season beginning usually first week of may.

We found the aircraft was just full of resort staff so Cabin Crew seemed to enjoy it too!!
They must of loved having MAN-DLM with resort staff and then DLM-MAN Empty!!!

Does the Tea Tray games STILL happen????

[TCAS_Alert]

Flew out to MAH on WW's last CWL-MAH sector in September. There were 6 passengers onboard, but apparently the return flight was full.

The crew were curious how we were all coming back, most were flying back to other airports I believe (myself to EMA and the rest to London).

Was a lovely relaxing flight - crew basically said if we wanted anything, to press the call button, they spent the entire flight in the first rows chatting and reading newspapers.

http://aviationphotos.co.uk/images/tr/menorca11/IMG_8996.jpg

[BadgerGrowler]

Many years ago, before the likes of Ryanair and Easyjet my parents used to have a villa in Portugal. and at the end of the summer holidays we used to fly back, one year it was a Dan-Air 727 with nine pax and the following year it was an Air Europe 757 with just my parents and me.

Used to get spoilt rotten by the cabin crew, and allowed in the flight deck for longer than the statutory 5 minutes.

[Denti]

At least over here in central europe the tourism industry has changed over the last 5 to 10 years and we do have considerable loads off-season and of course starting or ending a season on both ways. Of course load factors differ, but more along 70% to 95% vs. the old 5% vs 95%.