Why would a plane fly with no one on it?
Why would an airline pay the pilot and crew, fill the huge tank of a commercial aircraft and take off without cargo or enough passengers to justify the expense?
Is it really happening?
Yes, every month in Europe dozens of planes take off that are essentially empty or with less than 10% of its capacity and which are known as “ghost flights”.
For years the phenomenon, which does not occur in Latin America or the Caribbean, has been a reality, but with the arrival of the pandemic and travel restrictions, the problem became more pressing.
Many airports require airlines to perform at least the 80% of scheduled flights to maintain takeoff and landing rights at certain times (slots).
That leaves a 20% cancellation margin.
If their operations do not meet these percentages, they are forced to activate empty planes to maintain the slots or the following year they risk lose the best business hours.
It is not the same to take off from London at 6 in the morning than to do it at 8 or 9.
Landing in Madrid at 5 in the afternoon is not the same as at 1 in the morning, when the subway has already closed and connections to the city center are more complicated.
The price is not the same either.
“Use it or lose it”
So in the most congested airports , and in order to organize all air traffic, the European Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States apply the rule “use it [the slot] or lose it”.
“Ghost flights are defined such as those operated voluntarily by the airlines exclusively in order to preserve the historical rights over their slots”, they explain from the Airports Council International -ACI for its acronym in English-.
The organism, which represents the interests of airports before governments adds that “ghost flights are not offered for sale, do not carry passengers and do not generate revenue for airlines.”
Many believe that ghost flights benefit no one and that it is an unnecessary and wasteful practice time.
Other than the coordinated distribution of slots in airports that are at their maximum possible capacity ensures competition between airlines and benefits consumers.
“These are flights that, a priori They don’t make economic sense, much less environmental sense. A lot of kerosene is burned, which has a clear impact on climate change,” says Diego R. González, president of the World Association of Airport Lawyers.
Traditional and low cost airlines
The key is precisely in the commercial aspect.
“The slots are those assigned times or shifts. If they don’t use them, they are penalized. The following year the airport authority assigns it to another company and for the airlines it is a way of losing market share“, affirms González.
For the lawyer there is a bid between the traditional airlines and the that have recently arrived on the market, which encourages carriers to make every effort to comply with the regulation, even if it is flying empty.
“The airlines that dominate the market do so because they have the best schedules , which are the most expensive. They are the routes that arrive at the airports during central hours in terms of convenience”, he says.
“When there is a dominant carrier that does not have competition on a route on a schedule, which happens is that it does not lower prices. There is a problem of competition between airlines that bid for a scarce resource, such as airport infrastructure“, he adds.
Willie Walsh, director of the International Air Transport Association, argues that this business model encourages airlines to fly at low capacity or empty to maintain slots.
“If you fly between two airports with regulated capacity, you need to have permission from both to not fly. Otherwise you have to operate”, explained the manager in a video while saying that he does not believe that there are airlines doing this practice deliberately.
Airlines demand greater flexibility in the rule.
But from the industry they also point out that before flying an empty plane, the affected airline could lower prices trying to attract travelers to the flight in trouble.
A rare policy to see.
Environmental damage
Added to this fragile balance of the aeronautical industry is environmental damage.
Aviation is responsible for around 2% of global CO2 emissions but the sector as a whole As a whole, it accounts for around 3.5% of global warming due to human activity.
And it is a sector that will continue to grow.
From the year 93, emissions have increased by 50% and the industry is expected to grow more than one 4% each year for the next two decades, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The environmental damage of “ghost flights in Europe”, according to Greenpeace, is “equivalent to the emissions more than 1.4 million cars annually”.
And all at a time when the aviation industry has committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
It does not happen in Latin America
The situation in Latin America and the Caribbean is different.
It must be taken into account that the slot system is in force at airports with capacity at the limit.
“Evidently there are congested airports in some countries such as Brazil or Mexico and at certain times in Peru and Colombia, but in the region it is not happening because the capacity of the airports has not reached a point where they need restrictions”, says González.
And it is that although after the pandemic the volume of passengers is recovering, the number of aircraft movement is not representative enough to force airports to take action.
“Europe is suffering, among other things, from a latent demand. That is, people who were waiting for everything to open to travel. Also of the recovered flights that were not made during the pandemic. That ticket you bought and it stayed there until everything reopened”, says Rafael Echevarne, general director of ACI for Latin America and the Caribbean.
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