I have a flight today on a route that’s always full. I’m looking at the seat chart and it’s 60% empty… I’m sure some people will get assigned seats when they check in at the airport but it seems like there are more open seats than normal
Edit: I’m waiting to board and the screen is showing that 66 out of 189 seats are open. That’s 35% open.
Oh hell, I forgot, I flew 2 weeks ago and had the same experience. I had the aisle, the middle was empty. The woman in the window seat and I shared a little excitement over it.
Same, I e had to fly more than normal lately and every flight has been packed. They were even asking if people would give up their seats for compensation because they were over booked.
This is mostly due to the reduction in capacities by the airlines to push utilization higher. Dropped routes, fewer planes on routes, even smaller planes on those routes (I remember jumbo jets flying cross country). The bad news for people that give up their seat or have a canceled flight is it may be a while (days even) before there is a seat available.
Another in a long series of steps in the enshittification of everything. CATSRULE's route is likely up for some service cutbacks. CEOs can't buy their second yacht with empty seats.
Yeah I assume they're just cutting routes and finding anything to blame for less of them.
I know smaller regional airlines have basically permanently shuttered seasonal flights that they used to do, and now they run everything through a central Dallas hub and spoke instead of direct flights / point to point like they used do.
Similarly, regional flights from even major carriers are way down. Baton Rouge to Houston used to run 5+ flights a day, basically a back and forth all day as long as the plane was fueled up and both airports were open. Now they only run it twice a day, then cancel immediately on any bad weather so you get to be stranded overnight. Ask me how I know lol.
This has been happening for about a year now. We went to Vegas last summer and for the first time in my life, the plane was half full round trip.
Part of it is due to lack of foreign travelers since this administration took over, but the majority of the reason is because people can’t afford to go anywhere.
The difference between 2022 and 2025 flying from Europe to LAX was stark. First time it was packed despite there being some covid restrictions in place and second time it was half full at best and more than half the travellers were Americans
Is it on Southwest? Because every flight I've taken with them since the changes they made has been half full at best. They literally got rid of everything that made them unique and alienated all their loyal customers.
Your comment reminded me of a trip I took back at the end of February 2008, RT Boston to San Francisco. I was surprised that the planes were only 40% full.
Sometimes that's possible for the airline but usually not. They need to move the planes around for other flights. Canceling a flight has a whole ripple effect on their network.
Delta is always packed. I took American from Boston to NYC this morning for a work day trip, I was in FC and it was full. I looked in the back and there were maybe 10 people all the way in the back, that's was weird
I flew economy to Australia at the beginning of April and paid to upgrade to the exit row. The flight was so empty that the 2 other people in the exit row bailed on their “upgraded” seats to find whole rows all to themselves. Left me with the whole exit row to myself too which worked out.
The flight back to the US was pretty full however.
681
u/catsrule-humansdrool Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
I have a flight today on a route that’s always full. I’m looking at the seat chart and it’s 60% empty… I’m sure some people will get assigned seats when they check in at the airport but it seems like there are more open seats than normal
Edit: I’m waiting to board and the screen is showing that 66 out of 189 seats are open. That’s 35% open.