Today I booked a trip SYD-MEL and saw that Qantas (IIRC, might have been Virgin Australia) was operating an A330-200 "domestic" on the route. AirlineSim's Aircraft Type Evaluator shows that that plane isn't profitable on that route :)
In the game, I'm looking at how to move more passengers SFO-LAX, and anything larger than an A321 seems to cost too much to get off the ground, even if I sell every seat and fill the cargo bays. On short routes like this, AB6's, A313's, and 752's generate small or negative margins.
You need more business class and higher price to make wide bodies profitable on short flights.
757 is a narrow body so you are pretty much safe and will make a lot of money. larger planes like A300, 747 requires more than just standard price. You will have to add more business class if you don't want to raise price too much because economy class doesn't make nearly as much profit as upper class does.
I'm seeing low or even negative margins on shorter 757 flights, even with prices of +40%. As I start to break down the numbers and compare with some new A321's, it looks like the older planes' maintenance cost is a big factor. That said, AS isn't allocating maintenance expense across flights in an obvious way, and doing one's own analysis would seem to need a whole week of accounting data...
Also in the new pricing system (Ellinikon, Riem, Quimby, Otto), very short haul routes are unprofitable even on narrow bodies unless they are really 80%+ full, so widebodies with that pricing model are considerably more complicated.
Unless the maintenance cost is adjusted for widebodies on short hops, they will remain unprofitable (maintenance cost is what really makes widebodies unprofitable)
744D is not too 'old' consider its just over 10 yrs old. 747SP is indeed hard to take care of. Age is an issue, but more because it doesn't take too many PAX for you
Probed by this thread I decided to check the cost per seat mile of some common aircraft... And it tell me, cost per seat on the LAX-NRT route on an A380 is higher than 744, which in turn more higher than 789. I thought A380 should benefit from being a newer aircraft and economic of scale to be considerably cheaper than 744 to fly per seat?
The cost analysis in game isn't actuate because it's calculating single seat class, but we can disregard that for now:
First of all, twin engine will save fuel, so you can't compare that with 747 and 380.
for the 380 and 747 case, you will find 380 more experience to lease or buy, and operation cost is indeed higher because of the landing fee and even more cost on fuel. It makes sense as it's larger and carrying more PAX. The maintenance is also higher and similar to 747-8. Since you are comparing more seats, so if you can fill in 380, you will get more profit after all. If considering 380 has an issue because it's a newer aircraft, 748 will be an even larger issue because it's latest than both 380 and 744 while it has the highest cost per seat overall.
Twin save fuel but each 787 can only transport half the passenger on 380...? I mean, it should be more efficient to operate four engine on one aircraft than four engine on two aircraft?
Has anybody actually considered that the 744 is cheaper to operate on any route than the 744D? Anyways I use 15 A380s for short haul only routes and all do great.
Has anybody actually considered that the 744 is cheaper to operate on any route than the 744D? Anyways I use 15 A380s for short haul only routes and all do great.
That's interesting. Do you do that as you said through a higher business config?
I tried putting two (cheaply leased) A380s on JFK-LAX when LAX got down to 1% slots in Riem but it was massively unprofitable.
Has anybody actually considered that the 744 is cheaper to operate on any route than the 744D? Anyways I use 15 A380s for short haul only routes and all do great.
It is indeed the case, same for 744E. Most likely because 744 is cheaper aircraft than other two special versions, and we are not using the max payload on special routes, e.g. ultra short haul or ultra long haul, using Domestics and ER version 747. How we use it is not how they were designed for
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