Originally Posted by
raehl311
I've always been a bit mystified by the economics of transoceanic air travel. A business seat takes up the space of about two coach seats. If you factor in all costs (i.e. customer service, meals, etc), it probably costs about double to fly a business traveler than it does a coach traveler.
Yet business fares are routinely 4-6x coach fares.
So here is my question:
Why not rip out all the coach seats and fly planes full of business class at 3x coach fare?
Your business seats will be cheaper than anyone else's business seats and thus your plane should be full. And you'll be making 3x coach fare revenue on 2x coach seat space.
Very interesting logic, and I agree with you! However, it would not happen with all business class seats planes because:
1) There are people that would not even pay $100 extra to fly business instead of coach.
2) Businesses nowadays would not let their employees fly BE on a given airline even if it is cheaper than coach on another. I speak from experience because I found a business class seat cheaper than a coach seat on DL/BW from the company AMEX travel, and they did not let me!
3) I believe there is an airline (I forgot the name for the moment) that
already tried that and it was not very successful!