The Thrifty Traveler Podcast · Thursday, September 17, 2026
An analysis of a year's worth of load factor data, leading up to May 2026, identified long-haul international routes with a higher likelihood of empty seats. These routes offer travelers the best chance for extra legroom or even a 'poor man's business class' (Y flat) experience in economy. Many of these routes were recently launched, suggesting that newness contributes to lower load factors.
“what if we could look holistically at airlines' route by route and determine the long haul international routes that are the most likely to go out with empty seats, which means if you're flying economy, you have the best chance of snagging your own row or at least, you know, an empty middle seat. If you're really lucky, you get poor man's business class or as our coworker Nick called it, Y flat, which is just genius.”
“So what we did is we analyzed a year's worth of, um, load factor data. Load factor is just the percentage of seats that are full on a given route for, um, leading up into May of 2026. Which is the most recent data that's available for this kind of information.”
“if you do want to book economy and you want to have the safest bet that you can to have extra space to stretch out on that long haul flight, booking one of these new routes in the first month or two is probably the best choice that you can make.”