Originally Posted by stevekstevek

I think the fault in your logic is that the rates you're referring to are the marginal fuel use -- i.e. the difference in fuel use between flying a 777 with 75% seats full vs flying it with that same load plus an extra 200 lbs. The marginal cost here is less than the actual cost of the whole flight, because they still need to fly the plane itself.

Originally Posted by astanley

This sort of analysis rapidly becomes painful and navel-oriented, but...

I'm going to use my personal favorite BOS-LHR flight for all the below examples. Assumptions:

* astanley weighs 253# (that's this morning)
* A seat in Y weighs approx 31# (Recaro long-haul class seats)
* A seat in J (NGBC) weighs approx 98# (derived from a PowerPoint on the CL6510)
* A seat in F weighs approx 145# (derived from the same PowerPoint)
* Food/beverage allocation, by class - 16/28/48
astanley's carry on weighs 15#
astanley's checked luggage weighs 28# (that's my one week standard bag)
So, by class, to move my gentleman-of-luxurious-proportions self from BOS to LHR:

Y: $260
J: $320
F: $371

Now, that doesn't even contemplate the "cost per square foot" of each cabin (the fixed infrastructure cost plus by-class modifiers, like higher toiletassenger ratios and nicer fit-and-finish, plus seats and AVOD), or the nature of the market. That's just fuel-related cost of the fixed weights that I can scrape together. I completely left out any crew allocation, their compensation, benefits... we could go on, and then I'd fulfill my promise of making this painful and navel oriented.