One of my esteemed fellow forum members consistently derides people who bring up this issue. There is a lot more nuance to this issue than that esteemed forum member acknowledges, and much of it has to do with how airlines changed operations during the pandemic.
Airlines do indeed create schedules that they plan to fly. Pre-pandemic, airline schedules were pretty rock solid. If a flight existed in the schedule, it was almost certain it would operate. The pandemic, of course, changed everything. Early in the pandemic airlines "suspended" the vast majority of transatlantic routes and cut frequencies on routes that survived. Suspended routes/flights are routes/flights that an airline plans to restart at some specific future date. Early on, flights were suspended for a month or two. When it became apparent COVID-19 was a big deal, re-start dates were pushed father into the future.
Last spring, airlines hoped vaccines would result in much increased travel by fall. So, the airlines had optimistic restart dates for suspended flights and started selling tickets on routes/flights they hoped to fly in the summer/fall but were suspended at the time of sale.
For example, in spring 2021, I had 6 or 7 choices for transatlantic flights on Lufthansa and its partners for a fall 2021 trip to Bosnia. Only one was operating at that time, but (again) the airline hoped travel would rebound, so it was selling tickets on the suspended routes. I purposely bought a ticket on the currently-operating flight. Travel did not rebound as much as hoped, and when the time came for the flights in the fall, the only transatlantic flight option from the spring that actually operated was the the single one that was operating in the spring; all the suspended flights either had their re-start date moved into the future or had been cancelled altogether (meaning there was no longer a plan to operate them in the future). I suspect this is what happened to Pat. She likely bought a ticket on a suspended flight whose re-start date was moved into the future. I will respectfully submit that anyone who contemptuously and persistently demeans a fellow forum member across multiple threads for sharing such experience (and giving guidance based on her experience) lacks a basic understanding of how airlines operated during the pandemic and empathy for how that impacted others.
The good news is that travel seems to be rebounding very nicely. Delta reported last week that within the prior week it had its highest booking day in the history of the airline. Delta's scheduled re-start dates for transatlantic flights have held true the last few months. My esteemed forum member's description of typical pre-pandemic airline operations appears to be becoming more and more the reality of current operations. While airlines continue to tinker with their schedules far more than they did pre-pandemic, this spring's schedules appear to be far more reliable than last spring's schedules -- barring anything that suddenly upsets sales.
