I am Voyage Eastern of Singapore. Offering 13,200 seats per week. (Both ways). I am just wondering what seats are people using for their airplanes.
I see most airline use the standard seats with maybe Comfort for business but I am different. I prefer to configure my airplanes like so;
Sukhoi Superjets 95 LR 52 Comfort and 8 Recliner Long Haul. There are 6 of these operating 220 flights both ways.
This is standard and is offered on all flights which currently the shortest is to Medan 1hour 4 mins and the longest is to Cairns 6hours and 25mins.
Generally a 15% profit is made after all costs and I am pretty happy with this. Also I have a 5 bar service and like to jack up the prices.
Do people use the same and get the profits or use different and get a different profit.
It really varies form player to player, but with the kind of comfortable seating that you have, I would advice you to increase your fares significantly; push the fares lever to the right, as long as seats are being filled. With a good product like yours, you deserve to rake in more than 15%. You can push it up to 40 to 45% profits with these seats. Good luck :)
That is indeed a good very good product which will make difficult to compete with in the future when supply catches up with demand.
My advice would be, considering you want to maintain the recliner longhaul and comfort seats, reduce the extra pitch to 0 in C class and 1 in Y class. This way you can fit 60 Y class seats (that's 8 seats more which would bring extra ~1600AS$ per flight x 220 flights you do a week... Well, you can do the math). You might go for 4" of pitch in Y and get 56 seats, but that would be worthless as the seat pitch rating remains the same. So my guess is that you're going for 7" and loose 8 seats in the process... I would urge you to consider going for less pitch and more seats as the current tradeoff you are doing is not cost efficient IMO.
Personally, if I were to go for Superjets, I would get 15 recliner shorthauls for business (C class is very lucrative, so I want to tap into that) and 70 leisure plus seats for Y. That would give me 25 extra seats than you do, which means that now, at the start of the game I can offer tickets at the same price as you do and make a lot more money than you do. What is worse - later on, since I have more seats, my cost per seat is lower and thus I can offer lower prices than you do. Now, while it does not always work out like this, one day it could mean that you are out of business.
Don't get me wrong, the layout you have will be a killer in the future, but as I hope many will agree, right now you should have your eyes set into raking in as much AS$ as you can and expand.
Whatever you do, don't go replacing the seats you have installed as that would a bad investment which will take too long to pay for itself. Nonetheless, for future aircraft I would go for 8Y and 60C, but if your business loads are good (which I think they are) you should consider fitting more business class seats. And of course, increase your prices... by a lot. ~20-30% over standard should not hurt.
Oh, and since the topic asks what kind of seats people here use... Recliner shorhaul + leisure plus for me
If any plane where to do a flight more than 3 hours Comfort and Recliner LH are applicable. (2,00KM distance)
If any plane where to do all flights less than 3 hours Leisure and Recliner SH are applicable. (-2000KM distance)
If any plane where to do a flight more than 7hours Comfort/Comfort Plus and Lie Flat seats are applicable (5,500KM distance)
If any plane where to do a flight more than 10hours Comfort Plus and Lie Flat seats are applicable (9000KM distance)
If any plane where to do a flight more than 15hours Recliner SH and Full beds are applicable. (12,500KM distance on Transpacific and American flights).
This should be a little better and as most planes operate flights over 3 Hours the service and seats are fine.
The new Antonov I have aquired is configured in Leisure and Recliner SH offering 40 seats and all flights are under 2000KM so it does fine with the policy. Also the price is very high and profitable on the comfort SH's and the price performance ration is 2 bar positive on most short haul flights so it is changing.
I wish I could work out my planes by the amount of time they spend in air per leg that easily... All I know is - I have this plane and I need to fly to X Y and Z, no matter the length (for narrowbodies)
Anyways, I'm glad you worked Leisure seats into your rotation. They are great for domestic and shorthaul routes. I'd like to use comfort seats as well, but I hate the fact that they are configured in 2-2 arrangement. For me it's just too much of a tradeoff
Well, My airline is a long haul connector and I have fited my A321's with 20 lie flat's 140 and 130 comfort seats. And I do this because of the long term strategy, Off course I charge of the chart prices at this time and the A/C are fully booked.
P.S LJ there will not be many more new Sukhois instead I am getting some A318/9/ airplanes and will offer seats to and from SIN to SYD DXB and HND. LH and cheap to get.
Well, My airline is a long haul connector and I have fited my A321's with 20 lie flat's 140 and 130 comfort seats. And I do this because of the long term strategy, Off course I charge of the chart prices at this time and the A/C are fully booked.
that sounds like an exciting strategy. would have tried it with more cash at hand but for now think ill stay regional
P.S LJ there will not be many more new Sukhois instead I am getting some A318/9/ airplanes and will offer seats to and from SIN to SYD DXB and HND. LH and cheap to get.
Let us know how that goes. I checked Aircraft type evaluation for the numbers and I can say I wouldn't be so brave as to do the same ;)
Too bad about superjets though. I hear they are good planes, it's the waiting time which is annoying.
that sounds like an exciting strategy. would have tried it with more cash at hand but for now think ill stay regional
Thanks, it is the first time I use this strategy. Growth is off course slower then usually, but then again, one needs to save more money before te next A321 can be leased.
I am saving up for more Sukhois due to some competition on Dubai and Haenda routes so I want to strengthen the network. I will change to a B737 family due to the 900 being a plane capable of doing a substantial LH route.