<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by ShortyDog:
Does anyone know how much it actually costs the airlines to fly a commercial jet to/from New York/Los Angeles (fuel, fees, salaries, etc.)? I've never seen it broken down into an actual (estimated) dollar amount. </font>
A search on these boards (try the Delta archives, in particular, where
B747-373B tends to hang out) will likely turn up more information on CASM and flight operating costs than you ever wanted to know. Failing that, you might want to hop on over to airliners.net or some such site.
I do know that it is standard practice for the airlines to lose money on their
median passenger. That is, the fare paid by the passenger who has paid more than half the other people on the plane and less than the other half will usually be less than the cost to fly him.
This is because, until recently, airlines could always count on a couple of walk-up or like fares (the profit on one such fare can erase the cumulative losses of 20 other pax). It isn't working any more, of course, but --
shhh.... -- nobody told the airlines.
Mook