When you see a plane flying overhead, you probably imagine it’s full of passengers — or, at least, partially so. But as it turns out, that’s not always the case. Across the globe, thousands of flights known as “ghost flights” take place every year with no one onboard — the result of pre-pandemic regulations that require carriers to perform a minimum number of their scheduled flights or risk losing key slots at airports.
In the European Union, this policy is being newly scrutinized after airlines have admitted to operating ghost flights on the regular. Lufthansa Group — the parent company of several regional carriers including Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings, Lufthansa, and Swiss International Airlines — has flown 18,000 flights without a single passenger on board this winter alone.
