buckeyefanflyer

I took my first international fight in 3 years to Shannon, Ireland. It was nice to have complementary meals. The service back to EWR was especially great. After takeoff had beverage service and even a bag of pretzels. Not long after that had a hot lunch, chicken with rice and a salad. About an hour prior to landing had a hot snack, ham and cheese.
I am still trying to understand why they serve meals on international flights but not on transcontinental flights or even EWR-HNL 11 hours. I am going to HNL in a few weeks, rather then taking the nonstop I am going for a
IAH layover so I can get something to eat on the HNL flight.

mherdeg

What do you suppose is the average fare paid for a transcontinental flight? And a transoceanic flight?

colmc

Competition too - other European airlines still serve meals on long haul routes. However, very few domestic US airlines do when flying domestically - ergo, no real reason for CO to do anything different to AA/DL etc.

lensman

Isn't there food for purchase EWR-HNL?

TWA Fan 1

The difference is not necessarily so pronounced.

I searched a few random dates and came up with $338 round trip for EWR-LAX (13.7 cents/mile) and $442 for EWR-SNN (14.2 cents/mile).

Perhaps, though, the 0.5 cent/mile difference accounts for the cost of a meal in economy...if the cost/mile of the EWR-SNN flight were applied to the EWR-LAX itinerary, it would raise the fare to $348, or an additional $5 per segment, which is probably the cost of the Y meal.

Wayside

Any chance of them ever changing the pre-arrival Y service? It's always been the hot ham and cheese, served in the box, with the European potato chips and the German mustard or mittlescharf or however you spell it! At least that's what it's been on my Europe-US flights on CO in Y.

sbm12

A couple data points on what you can buy a fare for today does not translate into the yields of the different routes.

TWA Fan 1

Nor did I claim they did.

However, I should specify that I searched for a few months, and these fares came up consistently over many months.

Obviously, fares change all the time.

But the point is, at least for the next few months, you can buy anm EWR-SNN for a cost/mile comparable to that of EWR-LAX.

sbm12

So what was the point of stating, "The difference is not necessarily so pronounced," when replying to an inquiry about the average fare in the two markets. It seems to me that is precisely what was being claimed.

I'd rather look at the data from the DoT which has been aggregated and normalized than just spot-checking a few different fares to get a basis for what the revenue numbers are on the flights.

That said, I'd bet that the justification for continuing to serve meals is more competition-based than yield-based. IF they thought they could get away with cutting costs even on the higher yielding flights they would.

TWA Fan 1

The point is the difference is...it's not so pronounced. No, it's not an overarching scientific study with millions of data points and a Cray super computer analyzing data for eighteen months, but for anyone flying to these two towns from Newark in coach, they'll be paying pretty comparable fares for the foreseeable future...

dbaker

Is the revenue data available for international flights?

sbm12

I don't believe that at all. And the data you are providing that supposedly proves it doesn't support the claim beyond a very, very casual glance at numbers. It simply doesn't hold up.





I'm betting those customers are paying different prices in Y. And the trend continues out into the foreseeable future.

TWA Fan 1

I'm glad to see that we agree that fares are always changing...

Often1

None of this tells what the actual yield is. What is full Y EWR-SNN against full Y EWR-HNL?

The fact is that while there are deals to be had, what we don't have available to us is the fare breakdown and that's the stuff of trade secrets.

But, what we do know is that a TATL in F for $12K will sell (some). Try that on TCON and you will be Chap. 11 if lucky.

TWA Fan 1

Absolutely. My point was not definitive, just that you can buy EWR-SNN for about the same as EWR-LAX...which is indisputable, even if it does not hold consistently.

If you look at the charts printed by sbm12, it's obviously a reflection of the byzantine complexity of airline fares, so a truly definitive conclusion is virtually impossible.

You will notice a series of dates during which EWR-SNN is far more expensive than EWR-LAX, but what that really shows is that the lowest fare buckets on EWR-SNN have sold out, either because of highly restricted inventory, or greater demand, or a combination of both.

As far as TATL F vs. TransCon FC, obviously the TATL will be far more expensive, but also they are not comparable products.

On the other hand, if you look at TransCon FC and compare it to TATL J, the cost per mile to the customer is far more comparable. Yes, even TATL J is more expensive per mile than TransCon FC, but it's also generally also a superior product...

In fact, there are times when TATL J is considerably cheaper than TransCon FC...