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Why Heathrow Airport Had Empty Flights to Nowhere

Half as Interesting · 3.1M views · 2018-07-19 · 4:57

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Overview

Half as Interesting explains why airlines flew empty 'ghost flights' out of Heathrow to keep their landing slots under use-it-or-lose-it rules.

On Hacker News

Cited to show that empty slot-keeping flights predate COVID and Lufthansa's recent practice.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2020–2022

Topics

Aviation & aerospace engineeringBusiness & economics (other)
Search by tags
heathrowghost flightsairline slotsaviationuse-it-or-lose-it

What people said

lathiat · 2022-01 · Reference

This existed pre-COVID but is more of a thing now. See Half as Interesting - Why Heathrow Airport Had Empty Flights to Nowhere (3 years ago, pre-covid) [VIDEO] RealLifeLore2 also covered the same topic as the original submission: [LINK]

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scrollaway · 2020-03 · Reference

Yep. Featured on HAI a year ago, it's not a new practice it's just been exacerbated due to COVID-19. [VIDEO]

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gh02t · 2020-01 · Reference

Probably filling seats on unpopular routes that they would have to fly anyway. Perhaps in a similar situation to what's described in [VIDEO] , where an airline was flying empty planes to hold their slot at Heathrow.

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Sources

Video by Half as Interesting, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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