Today we’ve got an interesting Ask Cranky question from a curious reader . . .
Hey Cranky,
I read your column regularly and had a question you might be able to answer. What does an airline do to make up the capacity when a plane crashes? How do they operate minus a plane that would otherwise be zooming around earth full of people? With the spate of crashes lately I was curious how they plug the hole so to speak.
Cheers!
Robert
That’s a great question, and it’s one that a lot of people probably don’t think about. There are, of course a lot of factors involved in determining what happens to a schedule. First and foremost, it depends how much the fleet is scheduled before the accident. Larger airlines have spare aircraft in the fleet, so they can usually fill the hole, so to speak, fairly easily. Smaller airlines would have more trouble. I decided to turn to a couple airlines to see what they had to say about it.
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Cranky Flier
My name is Brett, and I’m an airline dork. I’ve had the bug since I was young. As a kid, I never missed a chance to go to LAX a…
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