8

The other day I happened to be booked on Turkish Airlines flight TK 1808 from LYS to Istanbul, with a connection to the far east.

It appears that TA cancelled the flight.

It's true there was some rain in Istanbul.

However, a number of people have asserted that TK rather often "economically cancels" flights. So, if there are only a few people on a flight and they have another shuttle later, they cancel one "because of weather" or for "technical reasons."

This could be a completely untrue rumour, but going back 20 years in the US, industry people would say this happened, i.e. with frequent shuttle routes and the like.

Note that the online history link above only shows a couple weeks so I can't really judge.

  1. is this evil rumour about TK true?

  2. in general (I'm thinking more here in Europe) is this sort of thing common? Or perhaps in other regions?

  3. is there any other good way to check if a flight you are thinking of using to link to a hub, "tends to get cancelled"?

JonathanReez
  • 82,178
  • 90
  • 394
  • 764
Fattie
  • 6,023
  • 2
  • 39
  • 84

2 Answers2

9

Flights get cancelled for a variety of reasons, but cancelling simply due to insufficent passengers is not a common one. Every plane has multiple uses during the day and cancelling flight A means the plane is not in position for flight B or flight C. It also means flight crews are no longer in the right place.

Weather cancellations can come from upline, it is not only the weather where you are leaving from or going to, it could be the weather where the plane was coming from before your flight.

Why their website didn't reflect the cancellation is anyone's guess, perhaps poor website functionality, perhaps a cached copy on your computer, perhaps a lazy webmaster ...

Rumor mongers love to champion their message, but other than shuttle flights were one plane goes back and forth all day long between a city pair, cancellations of single flights for economic reasons are rarely seen.

5

I think those two cancellations are just isolated instances. I have found another website which logs the LYS-IST route and in a span of about a month, those are the only cancellations shown.

Airportia - TK1808/THY1808 - LYS to IST Flight History

Talha
  • 231
  • 1
  • 2