My son is scheduled on a Skyeurope flight from Rome to Prague that is only 10% filled. Should I be worried that the flight might be cancelled? It will totally throw off his schedule if he has to train or wait for another day's flight. Any advice on how to avoid becoming stranded?
Posted by
Portland, OR, USA
805 posts
A few things:
I highly doubt it is only 10% full, Skyeurope is one of the European airlines that charges an extra fee to book a seat ahead of time and a lot of folks don't pay that fee. I speak from experience on this, I booked my mom and sister on SkyEurope from Prague to Rome last summer and although the flight showed it was mostly open, it was just that people hadn't paid the seat fee.
They are required to accommodate your son if his flight does get canceled on the next available flight (on Alitalia or Czech Airlines).
Airlines don't cancel flights for "marketing reasons (airline euphamism for undersold flights)" in cases where it is the only flight of the day. The only time I've seen ANY airline do it is where there are say, hourly flights to a destination and both are half full.
In any case, airlines cancel less than 1% of their flights in most cases (due to factors other than weather or other delays outside their control), so it's not a real risk.