Only passenger on a flight

[Espada III]

Chinese woman becomes 'world's luckiest passenger' - BBC News (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-35480239)

All well and good, but I had the same thing without the Facebook nonsense in October 2013 from MAN to LHR. Great service on BA with lovely staff and loads to eat and drink. Pity it was so short....

Best thing about it was the ability of an empty A319 flying only 200 miles to start the take off run from half way down the runway and lifting off within what felt like a five second ground run. I recall looking out of the window at two heavily laden A330s trundling to the beginning of the runway and thinking "...I wonder if we can overtake those two..." We sure did.

[Phileas Fogg]

I was the only pax once on a Manx J41 BRU/CWL and with a complimentary bar to go.

[Heathrow Harry]

Once one of 30 (including 8 kids) on a Qantas 747 Trans-Tasman on a Saturday night

Moved everyone into business class, joined by the single first class passenger - loads of free booze and food - everyone wandering about chatting

Turn off all the lights down the back except emergency lighting and allow the kids to run about there...

Marvellous!!

[SpringHeeledJack]

Was one of less than 10 on a BA 767 LIN-LHR on the day after the beginning of GW1. Everyone else was hedging their bets by not travelling due to fears of reprisals by Saddam Hussein's agents. In general, in the 'olden days' there seemed to be more empty seats on most flights, so you could spread out once in the cruise.


SHJ

[LlamaFarmer]

I had an EK flight several years ago on an A380 where there were only 10 people in rows 65-80.

Pretty much everyone took the middle 4 to lie flat for most of the overnight


That same route, same time of year, same time of day, a year later and I could see only 2 empty seats in the rear half of the downstairs.

[Hotel Tango]

It has happened to me on a number of occasions in 50 odd years. Best was many moons ago when I was the only pax on an Air Anglia PA-31 Navajo flight from BHX to NWI. As it was a single pilot operation I got to sit in row 0 and was even allowed a go at flying it. Great fun.

[malcolm380]

Happened to me in 2012. I was the only passenger on a flight from Scranton to Newark, for a connection to Heathrow. It was running late, and we arrived at the gate directly across the pier from the Heathrow flight, so I had a few yards to walk for my next flight. I've always wondered if that was deliberate or coincidence.

[PAXboy]

When I saw the thread title, I thought the report would be this: Alex Simon was the only passenger on board a Philippine Airlines flight | Daily Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3418876/Alex-Simon-passenger-board-Philippine-Airlines-flight.html)

When I searched for the one from a week ago, this showed from a year ago: Man finds himself alone on Delta flight - CNN.com (http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/13/travel/man-alone-delta-flight-feat/)

My guess is that, with the multiplicity of flights these days, statistically it will mean more examples and so it will become less remarkable.

[ian16th]

I was one of three passengers on an Air Lingus 737 from Manchester to Copenhagen circa 1974.

The meal was fresh salmon, I had several helpings :ok:

[Metro man]

It's happened a few times on Air Zimbabwe, on the B767 and B737.

[ionagh]

Late 90s with Air Littoral, CDG to Saarbrucken they laid on an F100 just for me.
"Just ring if you want anything".

Return was some Embraer turboprop - for 3 pax.

Not surprisingly Air Littoral are now defunct :rolleyes:

[strake]

My wife, daughter and I were the only people in Upper Class on a flight to Miami nine years ago. Should I let the DM know..?

[alserire]

Me and a family of four shared a SAS 737 from DUB to ARN about fifteen years ago. Nice flight!

[xraydice]

mid 80's only pax LGW to ABZ with BA knew some of CC still did the safety demo, good choice of sarnies, and was able to change seats too :)

[twothree]

Flew a business passenger from either Gatwick or Heathrow (can't remember which) to Frankfurt. He was the only passenger onboard the 747, and declined the offer of first class.

[esa-aardvark]

Years ago was the only passenger on a Fokker 100 Eindhoven to Schiphol. Due to
a monumental sc**wup My car was at Schiphol and my flight was to Rotterdam.
When I explained to the flight crew... Don't worry we'll put you on the manifest (?)
when we fly on to Eindhoven, then we go empty to Schiphol. So that's what we did.
Quite low level, and then landing gate & customs all to myself.
Different times !

Forgot to say, about a week or so later a Fokker 100 broke up in a thunderstorm
shortly after departing Rotterdam. Always wondered !

[Espada III]

CC still did the safety demo

Yes my flight to LHR required the safety procedures. I asked if I could do them and was given 10/10 for accuracy!

[KeefBeer]

DFW-LHR 19 passengers.
Dinner served minutes after wheels up then FAs disappeared until breakfast service, plenty of snacks and drinks though.

[TLDNMCL]

Once had a L1011 Tri-Star to myself all the way from Alaska to the UK. The circumstances were exceptional, but this was a non-IFE aircraft, so plenty of food and a four-seat kip did nicely, thank you!

[Rossian]

....nowadays.

I was the sole pax on an Air Inter DC9 Orly to Nimes-Garons. The FA insisted on doing the pax brief while she sat next to me. She started "Capt Cauvin and his crew....." I said "Ask him if he was born in Madagascar" She looked at me very strangely but did ask, she was even more surprised when he came back saying fetch him up to the flight deck. When I got there it was immediately apparent that he was related to "Cauvin the Pirate" who flew for the local provincial political boss in Madagascar. He was astounded that I had flown with his father a few years before. The clue was in the fact that all the male members of that family were completely bald and had very regularly shaped heads (like Yul Brynner).
The whole family were all air mad and all qualified pilots.
The FO got all the flying on that leg while matey chatted and I was very well fed and watered (wined). It was a great start to a great month with the French Aeronavale.

The Ancient Mariner

[Cymmon]

Air Inter DC-9?

[pax britanica]

Couple of near misses

1974 one of three pax on KLM DC8 flying Bahrein to Amsterdam, Dutch out of favour with some arabs some avoided by some.

i was 24 other two were 70 plus

a lot of 'can i sit next to you for a while and practice my English from the lovely KL hosties-very nice after 10 months in Qatar.


1992 one of two pax on LH F50, Arlanda to Templehof , other guy miserable and sat at back reading documents, I am leaning into aisle to look at the open cockpit door and FO says-hi are you interested in flying -why not come up and sit with us. Stayed there for landing into Templehoff too.

So never been the only one on board but close and great 'added benefits' too

PB

[Mark in CA]

Snow screwed up ops at Chicago O'Hare while I was connecting there to SFO. Missed my connection. Everyone told me there were no more flights to SFO that night and I was practically out the door when I heard a last call for boarding for a United flight to SFO! Wound up on a 747 that had been delayed about seven hours since 3 pm and was finally departing around 10 pm. Ran to the gate, door was already closed, plane still sitting there, and someone from the next gate opened the door for me. Got on to find only about 20 people on board. Everyone else chose to take earlier flights. Yes, this all occurred before today's security theater. Must have been around 1984 or 5.

[Gibon2]

Just me and my wife on an EgyptAir 737 from Tel Aviv to Cairo, 1995 or so. Very strange experience. Plane was a completely unmarked white-tail, operated by some notional subsidiary of EgyptAir created just for that route. Long distance politically, but short flight. When we arrived in Cairo, they couldn't get the door open, so we sat in the first row and watched while burly people outside on the air stairs pushed and thumped, rocking the empty plane back and forth.

[5711N0205W]

This was quite a few moons ago when BA were running the 'Shuttle' product and would have a standby airframe if the first one was full, or something like that.

I boarded an EDI - LHR flight to find that there were two occupied seats other than mine, former Goodie Tim Brooke-Taylor in one and his Golf Clubs in the other.

[Davef68]

Nearest I've got was as one of four passengers on a BA/Brymon Dash 8 between Bristol and Edinburgh.

[Rossian]

......it was a rear engined twin entered by a set of steps right at the rear between the engines. Is there another a/c with that configuration? Does a Caravelle do that, maybe?? It was a long time ago.....

The Ancient Mariner

[Mr Mac]

Have not had the luck of some of the posters on here, but below are a couple of tales.


EK Saigon / HCM to DXB just after service started. 2 of us in Business, 30 in the back on 777.


When working for an American company we had to move some materials from Houston to the UK and could not wait for them to go by ship due to penalty clauses, and there was too much to go on the weekly 747 KLM Combi. Talked to my then boss, and we hit on the plan of hiring 2nr DC8 freighters from a company in Kansas who came down to pick up the materials. I was due to go back to the UK and asked if I could travel with them, to which the reply was an affirmative. I boarded and asked the Captain where I could sit, only to be told by him "this is your air force sit where you like other than these 3 seats (pointing at his, FO, and ENG)" I have a picture on the ramp at Houston at home somewhere, with me stood in front of the two planes at sunset with a White Board Reading "Mr Mac,s Airforce 19th August 1988" Rode all the way home in the Jump Seat. Different times as they say.


Regards
Mr Mac

[PAXboy]

Mr Mac. Two aircraft of your own and the jump seat across the Atlantic? I think you just 'won' this thread :ok:

[DaveReidUK]

......it was a rear engined twin entered by a set of steps right at the rear between the engines. Is there another a/c with that configuration? Does a Caravelle do that, maybe?? It was a long time ago....

The Caravelle did indeed have ventral airstairs, and unsurprisingly Air Inter operated a couple of dozen of them at various times.

So did the One-Eleven, of course, but needless to say they never had any of those.

[Hotel Tango]

But, in typical PPRuNe fashion, :) we have moved away from the original point of the thread: ONLY PASSENGER ON A FLIGHT.

Further to my Air Anglia experience, digging a little further, I also made solo "passenger" status on:

-Orion Airways B737-300 positioning flight from Manchester to Birmingham

-Rosenbalm Aviation (Emery) DC-8 70 series cargo from Maastricht to Manchester

-Aviaco DC-9 positioning from Tenerife to Las Palmas

-Air Europe Express Shorts 360 cargo flight from Birmingham to Maastricht

-Britannia Airways B737-200 positioning flight from Birmingham to Monastir

-Air Kent PA-31 Navajo on a scheduled (short-lived) Brussels to Manston flight

-Condair FK-27 cargo flight from Luton to Maastricht


And a few more still, but I've bored you all enough as it is! ;) There were also flights where 1 or 2 of my colleagues and I were the only passengers on the flight (generally positioning flights).

[Cymmon]

Sorry Rossian, I wasn't trying to be funny but I couldn't remember air Inter operating the DC-9, thought it might have been a lease.

But definitely a Caravelle.

I'm not 100% sure but not sure if it was Air Inter that had a BAC 1-11 on a very short term lease. I'm sure I will be proven wrong on this one.

[Shanwick Shanwick]

In the early 90's I was the only passenger on an Icelandair 737 from Keflavik to Newcastle. It had been a 7-day charter with Icelandics spending the time pre-Christmas shopping.

I spent most of the flight in the Flight Deck where I sat in the Captains seat and even flew the aircraft for a while.

Those were the days!

[Phileas Fogg]

I was the only passenger on a DC10 positioning LGW/MAN for the first MAN/MIA 'Skytrain' service.

I was having a good time down the back with the cabin crew before the Captain invited me up front for the landing in to MAN ... I could hardly refuse.

Well there was serious turbulence on approach, the F/O was handling it, we touched down pretty much sideways on a soaking wet runway before the Captain uttered the words "well done".

By the time we arrived on stand I was still white as a sheet, the Ops staff came on board, realised that I needed a stiff one and promptly took me to their Portakabin office where a glass of Scotch or two was duly administered :)

[EEngr]

If it was a fat person, would they still have charged him/her for two seats? :rolleyes:

[MancMoose]

Working in Vienna approaching Christmas 2003, I booked a flight to Birmingham with Duo Airways. The one-way journey was around £45. The mid-afternoon flight was on one of their Bombardier CRJ700's and upon boarding I was told by a rather bemused cabin attendant that I was the only person on the flight.

Sat way up front in a very comfy seat and enjoyed all I could eat and drink for free for the entire flight. The attendants came and sat with me and chatted about all aspects of the flight including, as I remember, about how they were a bit worried about the passenger loads to Birmingham and, I think, Edinburgh. It was my most memorable flight, most enjoyable!

Unfortunately their fears were not unfounded as the airline ceased trading a few months later, but the memory of my own "private jet" will stay with me forever!

[beamender99]

The nearest I have come was one of seven on Concorde from WAS to MIA just before they chopped the route.

[MichaelOLearyGenius]

When Ryanair used to do penny flights, I'd buy up as many of them I could so that I almost had a FR 737 private jet all to myself.

[Mr Mac]

PAXboy
Been away on leave so just picked up your comment and had a look back to see if I could find photo - no success yet but did find old work diary(Filofax !) and aircraft were from Emery arranged through Kuhn & Nagel. My A/C Captain was called Jacobs or Jacobsen (its faded a bit so difficult to read) and he was ex USAF, and flew B52,s during Linebacker 2 operation over the then North Vietnam. From memory I think he said his A/C was called the "Mekong Express" and he was quite descriptive in his tales of attacking the North, describing the "Sam Song" they would hear when being tracked by guided weapons. It was interesting to compare with my own Fathers tales from his (very) limited experience over Germany in 1943, as though technology had changed, the human being had not, so tales of burning cities and A/C were in some ways not dissimilar, nor the terror of carrying out these raids for the aircrew involved.


As for the DC8 I flew in, I can only say they both had a few miles on the clock and were a little care worn but both behaved themselves, and indeed crossed the pond together a few miles a beam of one another, and were behind each other on approach.
One interesting thing was pointed out to me on the controls on approach in that the ground spoiler leaver is armed in flight, and above the leaver there is a sign saying "Not to be deployed in flight". My Captain said this sign came about from some accidental deployments in flight (with resultant crashes) as you have to pass the leaver pass the deploy position to arm them. He said they may well have put a sign saying "Do not crash this A/C", as it was the design of the system which caused this, not pilot error in his opinion. Other than that he quite liked them, though he was looking forward to flying some newer metal.


Regards
Mr Mac

[Hotel Tango]

When Ryanair used to do penny flights, I'd buy up as many of them I could so that I almost had a FR 737 private jet all to myself.

LOL, but just how many seats do you think they sold for a penny on any one flight eh? Then there was all the airport taxes to add on!

[edi_local]

LOL, but just how many seats do you think they sold for a penny on any one flight eh? Then there was all the airport taxes to add on!

No. When FR sold the Penny flights they were literally 1p. No fees, no taxes. Just 1p.

I remember going PIK-STN for 2p return, all in and it included a bag back then too, and airport check in as standard. The whole family went up and down for the grand sum of 6p! I used to regularly do EDI-BRE and it was once £11.01 total and the 1p was the whole return trip fare!

My uncle used to book so far in advance that he would be able to sort out his whole years domestic travel for about £5!

It's not sustainable anymore, sadly. :{

Sorry for thread drift. :\

[UFO1966]

Last November my wife and I were lucky to score points paid business class filghts SYD>ADL>SYD on Qantas.

We enjoyed the relative serenity of Qantas's business class lounge at Sydney and saw a couple of known faces.

It was an A320 to Adelaide and business class was full but the service and food was excellent. It was nice to be off the 'plane ahead of the plebs (or being one of the plebs ;-) )

On the return a few days later it was a Qantaslink 717. Rare in Australia and we had never been on one prior. We were extremely well looked after and prior to take off the steward told us we could pick any seat in business we wanted. The two of us were the only passengers in business. She also said the flight was not very full in general.

So my wife stayed in her allocated seat 1A and I moved over to 1D. The food and drink flowed at an adequate rate during the very pleasant flight and prior to departure the steward gave us a 1l bottle of water for our 90 minute drive home.

As we arrived at the baggage carousel we were very pleased to see our bags arriving as the first on the belt. :D

We have to fly to Melbourne in April. We're down the back of the 'plane this time :(

Life can give you chocolates from time to time...:cool:

[MichaelOLearyGenius]

No. When FR sold the Penny flights they were literally 1p. No fees, no taxes. Just 1p.

I remember going PIK-STN for 2p return, all in and it included a bag back then too, and airport check in as standard. The whole family went up and down for the grand sum of 6p! I used to regularly do EDI-BRE and it was once £11.01 total and the 1p was the whole return trip fare!

My uncle used to book so far in advance that he would be able to sort out his whole years domestic travel for about £5!

It's not sustainable anymore, sadly. :{

Sorry for thread drift. :\

Yes as long as you had the escape travel card there was no booking fees either, it was literally 1p for a flight. I was working in Bournemouth for a while and I literally commuted PIK-BOH-PIK every day. I remember the people at security double taking me every morning.

My friend had can apartment in Torremolinos and we both spent £1 and booked 50 round trips and just went to AGP every other week.

They were also very handy for birthday and christmas presents, bought my whole family a trip to Paris and Reus for presents. Didn't tell them they were 1p and they thought I was a hero :ok:

[Heathrow Harry]

"No. When FR sold the Penny flights they were literally 1p. No fees, no taxes. Just 1p."


knew a bunch of spotters in the NW who would book those flights out and back to anywhere just to visit new places and see new aircraft during the turn-around......

[eastern wiseguy]

Was on an ATC fam flight from UK to Malta with a colleague. When we pitched up for the return leg there were no seats available (including the jump seat).

We spotted a heap of EIN aircraft on the ramp as the Irish were playing Malta in a world cup qualifier. Being from Belfast we chanced our arms. We had NO tickets as such ,merely a "pass" from the Fam Flight office made out by Air Malta.

Long story short an Are Lingus guy took pity on us and put us on a 747! which had to return to DUB to do a trip to BOS that afternoon.

Three flight crew and no cabin staff (the engineer did the emergency brief...and showed us where we could locate some drinks!)

After that if Aer Lingus needed anything from ATC my answer was always YES ...now what was the question?

[thing]

Was on a trooper coming back from Belize in the 70's when I was based at Gutersloh. Most of the pax disembarked at Brize but four of us needed to get to Luton to get the trooper back to Germany. We were pushed for time and MT couldn't get us there. So the RAF put four of us on a VC10 and flew us there. Damn good service by the boys.

[PAXboy]

A VC10 from Brize to LTN?? So all they had to do was briefly 'blip' the donkeys and you were there :cool: The '10' should have had no difficulty getting out of LTN, even with the shorter runway in those days.

[thing]

They didn't even raise the flaps after take off, I think it was around a fifteen minute transit.

[mattjwood]

I have never had an empty flight, however two years ago me and my fiancé boarded a flight from TFS to BHX (Monarch A321). It was an evening Christmas Eve departure back into Brum and we were 2 of 30 others who boarded the flight.
Safe to say it was the most pleasant, relaxing and spacious flight I have ever endured.

I post this as I am flying across the Atlantic on a packed United B757 from BHX!!

[wings folded]

It has happened to me on a number of occasions in 50 odd years. Best was many moons ago when I was the only pax on an Air Anglia PA-31 Navajo flight from BHX to NWI. As it was a single pilot operation I got to sit in row 0 and was even allowed a go at flying it. Great fun.

I am a bit late I know (been away) but was that not Prospair?

[Impress to inflate]

April 1994 I did Kuala Lumpur to Japan in a 747-400 with 4 of us, 1 in first, 2 in business and me in economy, great flight.

[5711N0205W]

I crossed the North Sea as only pax in a Dan Air Budgie, rig being demobbed into SVG rather than ABZ, overnighted and then back the next morning full of Bears.

[Jerbourg]

I & a friend were the only pax on a Crossair Saab 2000 which was positioning ZRH-GCI, the airline was great & even put on a small catering box for us.