Originally Posted by
dilanesp
Whereas, a paid international longhaul business class passenger is the best customer an airline can have. That person pays $4,500 roundtrip for her ticket. While obviously, her seat takes up more space and she receives some amenities for that money, the profit margin on the ticket is still huge. United may be making $3,000 of profit on that ticket, or more. Which means that if you have a customer who buys two of them in a year, spending $9,000, that customer is worth a ton more to United than our *G customer who spends $10,000 in economy class. That occasional paid longhaul J customer is a much better customer.
I don't think those J numbers are realistic - numbers in the 777 IAD-SFO thread suggest costs of around $800 for 1-way domestic J. Scale that up, and profit on that 4.5k long-haul is way less than 3k (especially given the higher costs for food, lounges, more staffing, dealing with intl regulations, etc).
Still, there's likely to be a higher profit margin than Y, but nowhere near what you suggest.