A very telling image has been published by the Daily Mail that shows a solo passenger on an empty flight on April 15th from Tokyo to Los Angeles. The passenger wore a full hazmat suit in fear of the virus despite being the only passenger on board the aircraft.JapanWith fewer passengers flying across the pacific between the two countries, just how empty are these flights?

What are the details?

You would have thought that Japan Airlines flight JL 62 from Tokyo to Los Angeles (NRT-LAX) was a cargo flight or perhaps a very odd aircraft repositioning flight. The only telling sight that the flight was indeed carrying 'passengers' was a single patron in the economy cabin dressed in a full hazmat suit.

Simple Flying doesn't know who the passenger was, nor why they were traveling, but that their purpose must have been important to brave the trans-pacific journey from one coronavirus hotspot to another.

Images like these have become increasingly common since the aviation crisis began, with airlines reporting a fall of over 98% in overall traffic.

"Travel demand is essentially zero and shows no sign of improving in the near-term,' executives wrote in a memo on April 15". Spoke a United Airlines spokesperson to the Daily Mail, outlining just how far air travel is from recovery.

"Less than 200,000 people flew with us during the first two weeks of April this year, compared to more than 6 million during the same time in 2019, a 97 percent drop. And we expect to fly fewer people during the entire month of May than we did on a single day in May 2019."

But this doesn't compare to how empty the flights are on the Japanese flag carrier.

Just how empty are these Japan Airlines flights?

You only need to log on to JAL.com and look at an upcoming flight to Los Angeles from Toyko to see how empty the seats are.

According to the carrier's website, so far they only have 27 out of 244 passengers booked for JL16 on the 29th of April - less than two full days from now.

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The current seats booked in the economy cabin onboard JL16. Photo: JAL website.

Counting the seats, that leaves us with:

  • Two passengers in First
  • Four passengers in Business
  • Zero passengers in Premium Economy
  • 21 passengers in Economy

If anything, these numbers show that upgrading to premium economy is the first thing to go when it comes to seat selection. There are so many seats in the economy cabin that passengers are more than likely to have liedown room and don't see any point to upgrade.

Japan Airlines has been hard hit with the current aviation crisis, not only losing out on what was to be a big Olympic summer, but also delaying the entry of its low-cost-carrier Zipair that was due to fly to Hawaii (originally due to fly in May). Until this crisis comes to an end, it looks like low numbers are the near future for the flag carrier.

What do you think of this news? Do you think Japan Airlines will recover? let us know in the comments.