This reason this title is clickbait is because flying empty airplanes is actually really controversial.

Airlines need a certain amount of flights to keep their gate slots at airports.

Ghost flights were a thing during COVID. You had airlines burning 30,000 to 80,000 gallons of fuel and putting tons of pollution into the air for empty flights just to maintain gate slots.

I was expecting this article to be about these types of ghost flights.

> The rule: At busy airports, airlines must use their allocated takeoff and landing slots for a certain percentage of their scheduled flights (typically 80%) to retain them for the next season.

> Regulatory response: The rule was initially relaxed in March 2020 but was later reintroduced with lower thresholds, such as 50% or 70%, which still compelled airlines to operate some unnecessary flights.