headingwest

Just for the fun of it!...and to collect 32,000+ Avios when I visit my mother in Florida.

Swanhunter

The reality is that £338 super el cheapo economy ticket doesn't make any money for the airline, hence why WT passengers are processed like cattle. However it is better to fly the seat full for a low fare than empty. However full flex Y tickets can be both hugely expensive and probably very profitable. I do some short haul very last minute travel with tickets over £1K for a 2hour sector. I suspect I was the profit on those flights!

MickV

This must be a very simplistic view of it and totally plucked out of the sky figures wise.

crazy8534

Love the username, by the way.
You just made me think of 'the jackal'.

Andriyko

KBP does not often have many pre-booked seats. The other day there were only 2 pre-assigned to LHR in CE and yet it was full with 6 rows of CE. On the way back there were 4 pre-assigned in ET but they plane turned out to be full.

I don't think seat pre-assignments tell you much about whether or not a route is losing money.

Plus, PS seems to be a point-to-point carrier on the route (and they did not stop the second daily rotation unlike BA during the summer) as they don't have no connecting pax at LGW, whereas BA carriers many pax onto its longhaul services often in CW/WTP, so we can't really be sure how full a plane must be for BA to break even or make a profit on the route.

BA0197

It is a simplistic view, but in the realms of an all accepted forum, that is quite a complex explanation to prove a point about how airlines can dedicate revenue. Take it with a grain of salt, but know that is the general way in which airlines calculate a value for a route. The figures are not meant to be taken literally.

Expertly done Sixth Freedom ^

MickV

Totally agree. I actually think 6F has him to go a bit further than this.

Sigwx

Looking at load factors is very much a low cost point to point modus operandi. CTU appears to be doing quite well. All routes go through cyclic changes in both pax and cargo demand during the course of a year. The costs associated with routes also change. Some short haul stations are slip/non slip (layover) and that changes costs associated, but not always directly attributed to a route, but overall operation. There are winter de-icing costs and delay costs, summer time slot restrictions, changes in winds that mean less/more fuel required etc etc etc. Bums on seats is vastly irrelevant on some hub system routes. Take LHR-MAN/GLA/EDI/NCL. Some point to point fares or returns are vastly greater in price than the connection component of the EDI-LAS fare that was booked. However that is yet again a simplistic look at an assumption of how revenue is allocated. The commercial briefs that crew are made aware of on key routes assumes point to point return fare data with cabins around 75%ish full. The potential revenue earned from bums on seats is interesting, but not an overall realistic assessment of the route nor it's viability. That said, it is interesting to glean which destinations see traffic from key corporate customers. Very useful indeed to cabin colleagues in a more hands on role with the customers.
Cargo revenues are a whole other ball game, from tomatoes and green beans to horse seamen. You name it you probably had some in the hold of your own flights at some point. It all has a price attached in amount (weight/volume) and peculiarity (special handling). Some routes may haemorrhage cash a certain part if the year, only to reap the benefits of persistence, as well as not letting the rights expire, for other parts of the year.
Maximising that benefit is often why aircraft types and cabin availability change throughout the year. But now I am teaching granny to suck eggs

Swiss Tony

There are some BA/Air Berlin fares on the go at the moment (so two sectors) and the base fare is EUR4 (and there's no fat YQ in that either).

headingwest

Are you trying to say that I was ripped off?!

LDNConsultant

That is a rough schedule.. but its dirt cheap!!

Where did you hear about the LHR - ICN being switched to 787? I'm quite excited actually since my last experience on BA 17 & 18 wasn't that great on CW. But as others point out, LHR - ICN does have a very light load in CW/F - very few Koreans on the flight to be honest.

kanderson1965

Now you leave LBA alone lad. It's not our fault that there's nowt outside of Yorkshire worth flying to.

darthlemsip

As further evidence not to pay too much attention to allocated seats, I'm currently the only person with an allocated one for an LHR-JFK flight on AA in J next month - and I'm pretty certain that's a profitable route!

BA0197

This is a difficult one to answer with any certainty- or indeed without getting into the debate of allocating revenue between short-haul and long-haul combination tickets. Therefore I shall take a guess at it, but in two categorizes- SH and LH

For short-haul, I am going to say that routes that BA are required to serve to feed LH that have LCC competition are the ones suffering. These often need to be served more than a few times a day to feed BA's LH network or are there for brand reasons. Therefore my guesses are in this order (which may surprise some):

LGW-GLA
LHR-LBA
BAH-DOH

For Longhaul, it is difficult to speculate. I'm sure BA makes every effort to keep the easily profitable side of its business, profitable. So my speculations are somewhat unfounded but based expected yield from experience, my guesses are:

LHR-HYD
LHR-DXB
LHR-CTU

muishkin

BA001/002 when it was on the concorde? I am not sure I believe some of the BA's claimed profits on that route when you factor in all the subsidies that went into that project.