Do Easyjet cancel flights with poor load factors?

[Margrove]

Hi

Apologies firstly if I'm posting in the wrong forum. I'm new to posting on here and not being in the business, this seemed the most appropriate place to put my question.

I'm travelling LPL-BRU this weekend. Having looked at the up to date prices, I have discovered that the fares are still cheap - particularly so for returning BRU-LPL on 19th Sep. Travel dates either side are more expensive. This (perhaps incorrectly) suggests to me that the flights I booked on are far from being full.

My question is this - do Easyjet cancel flights with poor load factors? Logic suggests that to do so would hardly enhance their reputation and but equally, operating a flight at a loss isnt good business.

I don't expect anyone to provide me with a difinitive answer and in reality, I dont suppose knowing that its a possibility would make any difference in practice. Its just good to know if they have 'form' for it.

Thanks

[redsnail]

Depends.
If the "other" flight is full, then they would run it. (ie the flight LPL-BRU)

[Wanabee,Gunnabee,Am]

Absolutely no, the reputation is too important. If there were to be a tech problem it would be cheaper to cancel than to fly in a spare aircraft, although there is a spare in LPL. It is expensive to pay compensation for cancelled flights, probably more than the possible loss flying the route.

[WHBM]

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) does not tolerate scheduled airlines cancelling flights just because the loads are "not good enough". Furthermore they are quite wise to any attempt to claim a technical problem caused such a cancellation. Easyjet is a UK-certified airline, so comes under the control of the CAA.

[Tableview]

I fly EZY a lot and am not aware of them cancelling a flight for this reason. I believe they value their reputation and customers a lot more than some other LoCos, but I won't harp on about that as it seems to be a taboo subject.

[Hotel Tango]

If you're unlucky it could happen that if another (ex LPL) flight, with a full load, developed a technical problem, operations might make the decision to substitute it with your, lightly loaded, flight's aircraft and consequently cancel your flight. It happens, but not very often. Of course, this would only be the case if the return sector for your a/c was also light. As already mentioned, a light load outbound doesn't mean it's the same for the return sector.

[ExXB]

I'd say no as well. The cost savings are likely not that much particularly when compared to the reroute and compensation costs for those on the cancelled flight.

The circumstances would have to be perfect as well. Since not all aircraft go out and back. (i.e. Squeezy could rotate an aircraft EDI-LPL-BRS-GVA-BRS-LGW-EDI) you can't cancel any single sector without affecting some of the others. Crewing also comes into it as a cancellation could result in crew being out of position and having to be transported by other means to their next flight. Same with the aircraft itself.

The EC thought this was a common practice by airlines, which is why Regulation 261 compensation is 'punitive'. However a study by outside consultants done a few years after it was implemented showed that the rate of cancellations changed not one bit. Airlines cancel their flights because they are unable to operate, not because it's not economical to.

[GGR155]

Would it be a reasonable asssumption that a well run business such as EJ would have already factored in to its fares structure such a contingency to cover these rarely encountered costs?

[davidjohnson6]

If a flight has abysmal advance bookings for both directions, the airline is not suffering severe cashflow problems and the airline wanted to cancel for economic reasons, then presumably the airline would cancel at least 2 weeks in advance to avoid EU compensation applying.

[WHBM]

I'll just reiterate that the prospect of the wrath of the CAA descending on a carrier should they find (or even suspect) that a scheduled flight with bookings was not operated for commercial reasons is way beyond what compensation might be payable (which in the event has an actual take up of about 25% of the affected pax). Beyond two weeks ahead can be seen as a schedule change, inside that is seen as a cancellation.

Technical faults are something else, and you may lose flights because of that, although in the event of an extended fault the CAA once again would expect an air carrier to have the resources to cover this, hence the use of subchartered aircraft to cover issues, which really does cost the original carrier a fortune, but is expected.

[G&T ice n slice]

hmmm in the early days it was amazing just how many times the "mid day" flight ended up delayed & delayed & delayed and then cancelled and everyon accommodated onto the "evening" flight. This was at AMS in the late 90's

[Margrove]

Thanks for your replies everyone. I dont think either of the other leg flights are full but its good to know that reputation coupled with punative measures means that flights tend to run unless there's reasonable justification not to.

What a helpful bunch you are on here!

[easyflyer83]

In short, I'd say no. Quite often it messes up the operation and causes all kinds of additional costs whether that be surface transport or hotac.

Where frequency is quite high and low loads/delays/cancellations combined you are bound to get conspiracy theories. You get those on a normal day.

Quite honestly though, in 4.5 years at Easyjet I have never had any of my sectors cancelled. That said, I never had any cancelled at my previous airline either.

[Agaricus bisporus]

No.

But it was a large part of the downfall of Debonair. An airline's reputation won't survive much of that, and as said above the CAA won't tolerate any of it these days.

[Sunnyjohn]

Yes. A couple of years ago when they ran the flight VLC - BRS before Ryanair took it over, Easyjet also had a summer flight VLC - BOH. While we were being loaded onto the BRS flight, word came that the BOH flight had been cancelled. All eleven passengers joined our BRS flight and I assume they were bussed from BRS to BOH.

[fa2fi]

That doesn't mean it was cancelled due to a low load. I've worked flights with four aboard and it wasn't cancelled.

[davidjohnson6]

fa2fi - four aboard in one direction only but a fairly healthy load factor in the other direction, or four aboard in both directions ? Furthermore, was it the only flight of the day between the city pair (as opposed to the airport pair), or would it have been possible to consolidate the passengers on the near-empty flight onto a later flight instead ?

[WHBM]

While we were being loaded onto the BRS flight, word came that the BOH flight had been cancelled. All eleven passengers joined our BRS flight and I assume they were bussed from BRS to BOH.
Quite possible, because if there is an issue (eg aircraft gone tech, crew out of hours, etc), then the ops team will decide on the jury-rig rearrangement that is most effective on the spot, which might well include, if the aircraft with 150 pax for London goes down, giving them the Bournemouth aircraft, and consolidating 11 pax for Bournemouth and 100 pax for Bristol. It's the most sensible thing to do in the circumstances, which is not the same as cancelling due to low loads booked.

Meanwhile someone is organising the spare aircraft at Luton, plus a crew, to ferry empty over to Bournemouth for the next legs, plus a taxi back to Luton for that crew, getting a coach at Bristol to take the Bournemouth passengers on, all the while sending a second ferry crew over to Valencia to recover the tech aircraft by another ferry flight when it is fixed, and organising engineers and spares for the stranded aircraft. This is all big bucks down the drain, but what the ops team do to keep the show on the road.

[Hartington]

Thinking about this I've come to the conclusion that it's less likely with a Low Cost Carrier (e.g. easyJet) than a network carrier like British Airways. That said I think it's pretty rare these days.

Why?

An airline like BA generally speaking operate A-B-A or maybe A-B-C-B-A (I'm thiking of Australia here). Many of their routes are operated several times a day. If the bookings, in both directions A-B and B-A are low and if the next flight on the same route has sufficient seats to take everyone then a cancellation can occur and passengers are then reaccomodated on the later flight. But passengers are not the only consideration. There's a lot of freight moved in the belly of aircraft and it can be profitable to operate a flight with a very low passenger load factor if there is a good cargo load.

Low Cost Carriers like easyJet do have some planes that will fly from a base to a destination and straight back to base. However they also have aircraft that will start from a base, go to a destination, go to a 2nd and then 3rd destination and only then back to base. That's 4 flights and unless they are all empty cancelling them is probably not an option just because one of the flights in that sequence is empty.

There there's the Euopean Legislation effect see here Delays and Cancellations | Resolving Travel Problems | Passengers (http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?catid=2211&pageid=12716) which means court cases etc if they don't follow the rules. I think that helps to concentrate a few airline minds and probably reduces the number of cancellations for commercial reasons.

[ExXB]

I think that helps to concentrate a few airline minds and probably reduces the number of cancellations for commercial reasons.

Your statement assumes that airlines, in the past, regularly cancelled flights for economic reasons and they do so less often now. However you don't support your assumption any with empirical evidence.

But, as I noted above, a study done by expensive outside consultants for the EU failed to find any change in the rate of cancellations before/after the punitive compensation amounts were implemented. This suggests that airlines did not cancel for economic reasons in the past, and do not do so today.

(I recognise that an airline in serious economic difficulty, about to go bust, could take such measures. But this would be the exception rather than the rule.)

[Hartington]

ExXB, fair point. It might be interesting to know how far back that research went. When I first joined the travel industry in the 70s and probably more to the point when I switched sides to the airlines at the end of the 70s there were a couple of occasions where the airline quite openly told me a cancellation was because the loads of 2 aircraft could be consolidated on to one.

On a slightly different note, there have also been periods during oil shocks, wars and the like when two routes have been consolidated. I can remember going to Montreal through Boston because BA had stopped operating both flights and combined them. I think that was probably the 1st Gulf War.

I believe it still happens but that the EU rules have changed the game. If you look through the archives here there a posts about "can airline X really change my times in this way" and the answers almost always point at the EU rules. I think what has changed is WHEN the changes take place. The cancellations that I referred to when the airline admitted it was for commercial reasons happend less than a week before departure. These days they seem to happen earlier because the EU rules up the cost to the airline the later they leave it.

Having said all that it has never (in my experience) been standard operating procedure and I do believe that it has become increasingly rare (nearly to the point of disappearing).

[lowcostdolly]

In reply to the OP question.........no.

I've operated a few in the past where the loads are so poor I have had to reposition pax either under flight crew direction for trim purposes or to make sure all overwing exits are manned by an ABP. It probably would have been operationally cost effective to cancel but they didn't.

Not recently though, the loads have been just fine:ok:

[WHBM]

When I first joined the travel industry in the 70s and probably more to the point when I switched sides to the airlines at the end of the 70s there were a couple of occasions where the airline quite openly told me a cancellation was because the loads of 2 aircraft could be consolidated on to one.

On a slightly different note, there have also been periods during oil shocks, wars and the like when two routes have been consolidated. I can remember going to Montreal through Boston because BA had stopped operating both flights and combined them. I think that was probably the 1st Gulf War.
My hunch, from the reference to "travel" rather than "aviation", is that this was holiday charter flights. These are quite different to scheduled flights as practiced by Easyjet. Holiday charters do indeed start with a programme and then, at time of thin loads, get "consolidated" if thought appropriate, by a range of approaches (double-drop flight, coaching to another airport, etc) if bookings don't meet expectations. Part of the reason that charters for a tour operator from different UK airports to a given Mediterranean destination all operate on the same day was to facilitate this.

Changes like BA made were a normal published schedule adjustment, as happens regularly.

[Sunnyjohn]

Quite possible, because if there is an issue (eg aircraft gone tech, crew out of hours, etc), then the ops team will decide on the jury-rig rearrangement that is most effective on the spotFair comment. I wasn't meaning to be critical, by the way. I believe in this case it was because they needed a spare aircraft pretty quickly and Valencia happened to be handy.

[easyflyer83]

An airline like BA generally speaking operate A-B-A or maybe A-B-C-B-A (I'm thiking of Australia here). Many of their routes are operated several times a day. If the bookings, in both directions A-B and B-A are low and if the next flight on the same route has sufficient seats to take everyone then a cancellation can occur and passengers are then reaccomodated on the later flight. But passengers are not the only consideration. There's a lot of freight moved in the belly of aircraft and it can be profitable to operate a flight with a very low passenger load factor if there is a good cargo load.

I get your point but there are countless Easyjet routes, particularly at the bigger bases, that operate at high frequency.

You are correct however, that there are some W patterns and triangles operated in certain parts of the network and the BOH-VLC will definitely have been an example of this.

[Hartington]

Sorry WHBM; wrong assumption.

[jabird]

I'm flying with BE out to DBV at the end of the month. I'm wondering if I might be the only pax as it is last one out for the season! Still, they can't cancel it if it brings a full load back!

Surely the whole point of YM is that even if a route is doing worse than the route planners expected, you just drop the base price, and you still get a reasonable number of bums on seats.

Given that Easy largely fly between places with reasonable populations at each end (ie a lot of their routes will have demand from both directions), I would expect their flights to be easier to fill than when Ryanair operate from STN to the middle of nowhere.

Even if Easy aren't making anything on the flight, still better to put a bum on the seat and hope it will want feeding. It may also want to park itself in a hire car at the destination too.

So apart from special cases (start/end of season, major sporting events etc), how often is this even something that Easyjet actually have to worry about?

[easyflyer83]

Whilst i'm totally amazed at Ryanair's idea of Paris etc, to be fair to many of those airports, they do actually serve somewhere and sometimes which a large catchment. Curiously we see very little of this 'Frankfurt but 100KM away' in the UK. If we did then we could easily have seen Manchester (Liverpool), Bournmouth (London) etc. The demographics of the smaller airports used by Ryanair maybe very different but it doesn't always mean they are literally in the middle of nowhere and that flights struggle to be filled.

Back to Easyjet. It's just occured to me that on the weekly call we can dial into with Carolyn McCall, OTP stats are quoted and cancellations on your average week tend to be between 10-15 each week. Even if Easyjet were cancelling sectors, with over 7500 sectors a week, it wouldn't be a widespread practice at all.

[L'aviateur]

I've always wondered whether Flybe regularly cancels flights due to low load factors, otherwise the Dash 8 is a very unreliable aircraft.
You only have to read through the online reviews for Flybe to discover how regularly they consolidate flights due to apparent technical faults, and I've been on the receiving end of these on several occasions where the total load of the two combined flights has been around 20 people.
But then Flybe have such a poor passenger rating and reputation, it seems anything is possible. Unfortunately you can accidently end up on Flybe metal between CDG and MAN.

[ExXB]

Have a look at this thread (http://www.pprune.org/passengers-slf-self-loading-freight/495332-flybe-dash-8-q400-they-becoming-more-unreliable.html) about FlyBe's Dash-8s.

It appears they have a difficult summer with this aircraft type.