A “ghost flight” is a scheduled flight that runs with under 10% of its seats filled — near-empty, not literally zero passengers. Airlines occasionally fly them to keep valuable airport landing slots under the “use-it-or-lose-it” rule, which normally requires using a slot at least 80% of the time. This mostly happened at congested European hubs during COVID; there is no evidence Indian carriers do it.
Updated June 2026 · HappyFares
It sounds absurd: a jet roaring down the runway with almost nobody on board. Yet for a stretch of the pandemic, “ghost flights” became real enough that airline CEOs and environmental groups were openly arguing about them. The reason isn’t sloppiness or schedule-padding — it’s a quirky rule about who gets to land where.
Here’s the short version, and an important one for Indian readers: this is largely a story about a handful of crowded Western airports. India’s slot rules work differently in practice. Let’s unpack what a ghost flight actually is, why it happens, and why you’re unlikely to ever sit on one flying out of Delhi or Mumbai.
What exactly is a ghost flight?
A ghost flight is commonly defined as a scheduled commercial flight that operates with fewer than 10% of its seats filled — near-empty rather than literally deserted (Wikipedia; Simple Flying). The term is also used loosely for empty ferry or repositioning flights, so definitions vary by source. The thread that ties the slot-driven version together is simple: the plane flies mostly to keep a takeoff or landing right, not to carry paying passengers.
That last point matters. A truly empty plane is a stricter subset of “ghost flight.” In most real cases reported during the pandemic, the aircraft weren’t ghostly silent — they were poorly booked flights that an airline would normally have cancelled, kept on the schedule for one specific reason we’ll get to next.
Why would an airline fly a near-empty plane on purpose?
The driver is the “use-it-or-lose-it” slot rule. At the world’s busiest, slot-coordinated (Level 3) airports, a carrier must operate at least 80% of a slot series across a season to keep — or “grandfather” — those slots for the next equivalent season; fall short, and the slot returns to a pool for redistribution (IATA Slot Guidelines; UK Parliament). Miss the threshold and you can lose a slot you’ve held for years.
Why fight so hard over a slot? Because at a congested hub, a slot is one of the most valuable things an airline owns. A single Heathrow slot pair reportedly sold for around $75 million in 2016, when Oman Air bought from Kenya Airways — the most expensive on record at the time, per trade press, though the airlines never officially confirmed the price (Simple Flying; Aviation Week). Treat that figure as an extreme example from one of the planet’s most crowded airports, not a typical price — slot values swing enormously by airport, time of day and demand.
So the logic clicks into place. When demand collapses but the 80% rule still applies, an airline faces a choice: fly the plane near-empty and protect a multi-million-dollar asset, or cancel and risk handing that asset to a rival. Under normal demand this never comes up — flights fill naturally. It’s only when bookings crater that the maths gets ugly.
How many ghost flights actually happened during COVID?
The headline numbers come from winter 2021-22. Lufthansa Group CEO Carsten Spohr warned the group might need to operate up to roughly 18,000 superfluous, near-empty flights that season just to retain slots (CNN). That was a forward-looking warning, not a confirmed final count — the group ultimately flew fewer after Europe relaxed its threshold.
Campaigners ran with the figure. Greenpeace took Lufthansa’s number and its roughly 17% European market share and extrapolated to 100,000-plus ghost flights across Europe that winter, generating an estimated 2.1 million tonnes of CO2 — which it equated to about 1.4 million cars running for a year (Greenpeace). Read those as a Greenpeace estimate extrapolated from one airline’s figure, not a measured regulator count.
The airlines pushed back on the framing. Brussels Airlines, part of Lufthansa Group, disputed the “empty” and “ghost” labels, saying the flights were not empty but “scheduled flights that are poorly booked due to the pandemic” — ones it would “normally cancel” (CNN). Both things can be true: the rule created pressure to keep poorly-booked flights flying, even if “ghost” oversells how empty they really were.
| Figure | What it really is |
|---|---|
| ~18,000 flights (Lufthansa) | CEO’s forward-looking warning for winter 2021-22, not a confirmed total |
| 100,000+ ghost flights | Greenpeace estimate, extrapolated from Lufthansa’s market share |
| ~2.1M tonnes CO2 / ~1.4M cars | Greenpeace estimate tied to the 100,000 figure, not a measured count |
| ~$75M Heathrow slot pair | Trade-press “reportedly” (Oman Air/Kenya Airways, 2016), not officially confirmed |
Is the slot rule still suspended after COVID?
No — the leniency is over. The EU completely suspended the 80/20 rule in March 2020, then gradually phased it back up through 2021-2023 using transitional thresholds along the way, and it is now back to the full 80% (EUR-Lex; Council of the EU). The exact percentage varied by year and between the EU and the UK, so don’t fixate on a single mid-step number.
The global rulebook has also reset. The current standard is IATA’s Worldwide Airport Slot Guidelines (WASG) Edition 4, effective 1 August 2025, whose headline change raised the minimum slot-series length from five to seven — confirming that COVID-era flexibility has ended (IATA; ACI). As of June 2026, the full 80% threshold is back in force. Slot rules and WASG editions are revised periodically, so treat any threshold as current-but-changeable.
Do Indian airlines fly ghost flights to keep their slots?
There is no credible evidence that Indian carriers — IndiGo, Air India, Akasa or SpiceJet — routinely fly near-empty planes to defend slots. The ghost-flight phenomenon is documented at congested Western and European hubs (and some US and Asian slot-coordinated airports), not on Indian domestic routes (Wikipedia; CNN). Indian domestic demand is generally strong, so the conditions that create ghost flights rarely apply here.
India does run the same framework on paper. Under the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s “Guidelines for Slot Allocation” (revised May 2013), India uses an 80% use-it-or-lose-it norm with congestion-based airport classification and historic precedence, with slots filed to the DGCA and airport operators (Ministry of Civil Aviation; IndiaCorpLaw). But the rule mostly surfaces here as redistribution, not empty flying.
The clearest Indian case is the opposite of a ghost flight. After Go First’s grounding in May 2023, its sustained non-operation cost it historic slot precedence, and its domestic slots were redistributed to other carriers under the 80% adherence norm in 2024 (Aviation A2Z; IndiaCorpLaw). Go First lost slots by not flying — exactly the reverse of an airline flying empties to hold one.
COVID drives the point home. India grounded all scheduled domestic passenger flights from 25 March 2020 and only resumed them on 25 May 2020 (Business Today). While European hubs wrestled with near-empty planes to protect slots, India simply stopped flying — the opposite of the ghost-flight dynamic. If you’d like to understand how empty-or-not affects what you actually pay, our guide to airline pricing psychology breaks down how fares really get set.
How is a ghost flight different from overbooking or a ferry flight?
These three get muddled constantly, but they’re distinct. A ghost flight flies near-empty to defend a slot. Overbooking is the opposite problem — selling more seats than the plane has, which can lead to denied boarding. A ferry or repositioning flight flies empty for operational reasons, like moving an aircraft for maintenance or to its next route, with nothing to do with slots.
The confusion is understandable, since all three involve a mismatch between seats and passengers. But the cause differs every time, and so do your rights as a flyer. If you’ve ever been bumped despite a confirmed ticket, that’s overbooking territory — see our explainer on denied boarding and overbooking rights in India for what the DGCA actually guarantees you.
| Type | Seats vs passengers | Why it happens |
|---|---|---|
| Ghost flight | Near-empty (under ~10% full) | To defend an airport slot |
| Overbooking | More passengers than seats | Selling extra seats to offset no-shows |
| Ferry / repositioning | Fully empty | Operational — moving an aircraft, maintenance |
Common Questions
Does a ghost flight mean the plane is completely empty?
Not usually. The common technical definition is a scheduled flight running with under 10% of its seats filled — near-empty, not deserted (Wikipedia). A literally empty plane is a stricter subset. During COVID, most reported ghost flights were poorly-booked flights an airline kept on the schedule, not silent cabins with zero people aboard.
Have I ever been on a ghost flight from an Indian airport?
Almost certainly not. There’s no credible evidence Indian carriers fly near-empty planes to hold slots, and the phenomenon is documented at congested Western and European hubs, not Indian domestic routes (CNN). Indian demand is generally strong, so flights here fill up rather than fly empty to protect a slot.
Was the December 2025 IndiGo cancellation mess a ghost-flight situation?
No — that was a different issue entirely. The December 2025 IndiGo episode was about flight cancellations tied to pilot-rostering and flight-duty limits, plus DGCA-mandated winter flight cuts, not near-empty planes flown to defend slots (Business Standard). Ghost flights and cancellations are separate problems. If your flight gets cancelled, our worker page on what to do when an airline cancels your flight walks through your options.
Why are airport slots worth so much money?
At the busiest hubs, runway capacity is the bottleneck, so the right to land at a prime time is genuinely scarce. A single Heathrow slot pair reportedly changed hands for around $75 million in 2016, per trade press (Simple Flying). That’s an extreme example from an exceptionally congested airport — most slots are worth far less, and values swing with airport, time and demand.
Could ghost flights come back?
Only under another extreme demand shock. The COVID waivers have ended: the EU and UK are back to the full 80% threshold, and IATA’s WASG Edition 4 (effective 1 August 2025) is the current global standard (IATA). Under normal demand, planes fill naturally and there’s no reason to fly empties. Slot rules are revised periodically, so thresholds can change again.
Curious about more aviation oddities? Our explainers on why airplanes are painted white and where pilots and crew sleep on long flights dig into the quirks behind how commercial flying actually works, and our guide to alliances, codeshare and interline explains how airlines share routes and seats.
Booking a real flight, not a ghost one? Compare live fares across Indian and international airlines in seconds and book at the best available price. Search flights on HappyFares
Disclaimer: Slot rules, thresholds and the figures cited here are indicative, drawn from public sources, and change over time. Slot allocation is governed by national regulators (the DGCA and Ministry of Civil Aviation in India) and international guidelines (IATA WASG); confirm current rules with the relevant authority before relying on them. This article is general information, not legal or regulatory advice. Information is current as of June 2026.
