Plastic Pilot

Some British Airways planes crossed the Atlantic recently with no passengers on board, and the media made big buzz about it, using words like “scoop”, “revelation”, “scandal”, and so on. Let’s try to have a fair look at it, getting back to facts.

BA could not take passengers on board these flights because of cabin crew shortage. International regulation defines how many cabin crew members are needed for a given number of passengers, based on safety and security reasons. Regulation also define the minimum rest time for cabin crew.

As BA is presently experiencing cabin crew shortage, they were not able to staff these flights, so it was not possible to have passengers on board. What reporters did not undesrtood correctly is that not having cabin crew does not mean you have to cancel the flight.

It made economical sense to operate such flights for two reasons: freight, and return flights.

BA is making a significant part of its business with freight. They operate a fleet of cargo planes, but also board freight on passenger flights. So having such flights with no luggage at all opens for more freight opportunities.

Secondly, they had cabin crew available for the return flights. These could be crew members that were on rest at the destination, or coming on other flights. If BA decided to cancel the outbound flight, there would be no plane to bring passengers back. This would lead to two sets of unhappy passengers instead of one.

There is also a third reason for operating what media called “ghost” flights, and reports mentionned mainly (only ?) this one: keeping slots at Heathrow. The British Airports Authority (BAA) has a strict set of rules to attribute rights to operate from Heathrow, and BA could loose some rights by not operating these flights.

The media focused on this last argument only, making it sound like “BA operated transatlantic flights not to loose slots at Heathrow”. This obviously seems silly… but even if it had been true, this could have been the good decision, given how hard it is to obtain and keep such slots.

Just in case you were out of the world when this “scandal” has been “uncovered” by media, here are a few links for you:

CNN video report (right hand side of the page, in video list)

BBC paper from 12th of March (to show the issue is not exactly “hot”)

Canadian Press report