If I cancel a flight (manually) prior to departure, will it affect my overall company image, or route image (if such a thing exists). Also, I understand that a new route can take a little while to establish, so if I keen cancelling it until load factor increases to a reasonable level, am I in fact simply making sure it will never have a decent load factor?
As far as I know cancellation don't (yet) affect your company's image. However, cancelling the flights won't necessarily do you any good, it would make more sense to concentrate on expanding possible connecting flights ;)
No your image will not be affected at all. On my smaller airlines (under 20 planes) usually micromanage them where I cancel a flight only if the load is under 30%, otherwise I would just lock or delete the route but fly the already booked flights. Though cancelations do not either affect your image yet but it might come in the future.
I think you meant to say that cancellations do not affect your image at the moment (because delays do).
If you cancel a flight that has any bookings, you do have to pay compensation (equal to the ticket price) to the passenger/cargo sender, in addition to not receiving the revenues. Cancelling every flight for a couple of weeks will be a significant expense.
What you can do is start the route with a smaller aircraft, and then switch the aircraft for a larger one once the route has established itself. This will be much easier if you use a small aircraft with similar airspeeds and turnaround times. Otherwise when you do the upgrade, you may have to juggle departure/arrival times to make the flight work.
Indeed, unless a flight is pretty much empty, it's often better to let it fly at a loss anyway rather than cancelling, as even if it's just a third full what you pay in compensation to passengers is usually higher than the loss it would make.
Unless it's a long haul flight, in which case if it's incurring massive losses then you need to seriously reconsider if the route is a good one.
OK…thanks for all the replies.
A related question so I won't open a new thread: how long does a delay have to be to start affecting your image? I have a flight which fails to arrive at my wave schedule by just 1 minute, which so far I've compensated for by increasing cruise speed. The fuel difference isn't much, but with the new system, is it best to force an override knowing the flight will always be delayed by 1 minute, or will that affect my image?
After 5 minutes or more delay, your image will be affected.
Thanks! :)