Originally Posted by
Boraxo
If you look at legacy airline operations, the most profitable routes are the international ones, where they can collect premium fares for business class travel, in effect subsidizing the rest of the plane (and the domestic routes).
I really meant "affordable long-haul travel" but ran out of titular room. From the responses it appears the new planes can produce some gains but nothing to offset fuel cost pressures as they have been lately. The floor on U.S.-Europe tickets (where there's some pricing power) appears to be $200-300 higher than in the not-so-long-ago days of cheap fuel. If cost pressures keep up then it would really start reversing decades worth of progress as far as affordability for the average person goes.