Originally Posted by
AeroEnvoy
I was doing some research about 9/11 and I stumbled into something interesting unintentionally. I noticed that the flight loads for all four hijacked airplanes were less than 100 pax. The loads ranged from 30-100 and some of these aircraft were wide body flying trans con flights. I guess my question here is how did the airlines stay in business back then (Pre-9/11) flying loads so light and now that they’re back to flying similar loads they’re in a bankruptcy panic? Any ideas or insight?
don’t forget, those wide bodies were 767-200’s. AA only had 167 seats in those, so even at 100 pax, that’s still roughly 60% load factor. AA replaced those 767’s with their 100 seat A321’s. Also remember, back then the 737-800 and A320 (A321 still had a long ways to go) were not really considered transcontinental aircraft. So you flew either the 757 or 767.