A plane takes off or lands at London’s Heathrow Airport approximately once every 45 seconds during its operational hours. Each flight represents a technological miracle: hundreds of tonnes of metal compelled into flight; hundreds of gallons of jet fuel burned; years of training for pilots and ground crew; whole days dedicated to maintenance and preparation.
Some of the planes which take off or land at Heathrow are, however, empty. No passengers. No crew except the pilots.
What is more, they are empty on purpose.
At first look it seems utterly irrational to pour so much effort and money and time and material into making a flight that carries no passengers, nor any cargo. That serves no obvious purpose. And yet, there is a reason behind these ghost flights.
Heathrow is one of the busiest international airports in the world, with entry and exit via its two runways tightly monitored. The scrum of airlines which wish to fly there must bid for the right to do so against their competitors. In order to maintain the delicate balance of the airport, arrivals and departures are sold in pairs, the timings of which are generally inflexible.
Thus an airline which wins the right to land a plane during a popular early-morning weekday slot may also have to arrange a takeoff at a considerably less convenient hour. It’s not a viable option to use only one half of a pairing, or to purchase a slot pair and then not use it. Slot pairs that aren’t regularly used are reassigned to other airlines.
The right to use Heathrow doesn’t come cheap. Slot pairs which include popular times can range into the tens of millions of pounds. Losing a slot pair through inactivity is, then, an expensive prospect.
And so we end up with ghost flights. Aimless journeys carried out simply because it was necessary to take off at a certain time. Cheaper by far to fly an empty plane a short distance to another airport than to jeopardise a multi-million pound contract – especially as ghost flights do not need to carry stewards, load baggage, or pay the taxes involved in offloading passengers at their destination.
When you see a plane passing over your city at night it is tempting to imagine the passengers within peering down. To feel a slight frisson of the excitement of travel. To appreciate, momentarily, the miracle of flight, and wonder where those souls have come from, or where they’re heading to.
But entertain also this possibility: the seats on that flight are empty, the lights are dimmed, the cabin is silent except for the roar of the engines.