Dear Forum,

have you ever travelled on an almost empty plane and wondered how much loss the airline had made? Well I did a couple of times and therefore I have the following question:

How many passengers need to be on a flight so that this flight is profitable for the airline?

Obviously the answer depends on a number of variables and cannot be easily generalized, but in case anyone has a rough idea...

Regards,

Alex

As you say, this cannot be easily generalised. For a start it depends on how much those who are on board have paid for their tickets, which could vary by a huge amount based on factors such as how far in advance they booked.

slashed,

Welcome to Flyertalk!

An important variable is the aircraft type. Each aircraft type comes with its own break even point, which translates into something called Load Factor for the aircraft type. Load Factor may also be influenced by other stuff established by each airline and the aircraft type they fly, the number of seats and cabin configuration set by the airline. Other FTers can chime in regarding that.

In mostly airlines they do tie ups suppose if a plane is remaining 23 seats then the other airline can transfer the passengers on other vacant plane. Its really hard to estimate exact money loss in this regard for vacant plane. You are lucky you getting chances to fly in vacant plane.

There are other factors too, such as if it is carrying lots of cargo, which can influence if the plane is breaking even or not.

Are you saying that if airline A and airline B have flights going XXX-YYY, and that the number of passengers combined is small enough to fit on one plane, airline B will put all its passengers on airline A's flight?

I've never heard of that before, and I'd consider it very unlikely. Often, aircraft need to go to the destination to work the next flight out. Also, why would an airline voluntarily move its customers over to a competitor? Sounds like bad PR.

exactly. (OP, there are threads discussing this already, btw. Do a search for "profitable and flights" and a ton of results will pop up.)

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...d-factors.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...ntly-88-a.html

Given that the difference between the deepest discounted coach seat and full Y can be as much as 900%, and generally F is more, the issue is not how many pax, but how many dollars worth of tix + freight + ancillary fees sold. Put simply, one pax at Y is equal to 9 pax at deepest discount (actually more because it costs fuel to carry pax even on cheap fares!).

You would need to look at the cost per flying hour, including some modular cost for overhead (gate, customer service, etc) and then look at the revenue generated by the particular flight. In addition, in order to keep business, maybe you need to sometimes fly loser flights so the competition doesn't step in.

It's an interesting question because there are a lot of FT threads about the "devaluation" of elite status by folks who have low spends, but think they have status and ought to get a lot of benefits when they are probably breaking even for the carrier at best.

Depends. Is the government subsidizing the flight to the tune of $1,300 per pax?

This is simply not true.

Each airline has a break even load factor (BELF) number overall and generally will also have numbers for routes, aircraft types and other permutations. The US BTS publishes data on BELFs for US-based carriers. http://www.bts.gov/publications/spec...ml/entire.html

Also, is the flight flying empty so that it can be positioned for a later/profitable flight?

The company I'm working for used to handle an airline (OLT) where 1 pax was enough to go beyond the break even point. I've just heard this, not quite sure if it is correct, but it could very well be, as they operate very small planes only. For jets (esp. jumbo's) it's much much more then a couple of pax.

do you have an example?...carrier, flight #, date?

aa would have very light loads on planes going to tulsa for week long maintenance....

On some flight the airline make more flying a pound of cargo than a pound of flesh.

Here's a simplified profit model that does not account for freight:

Avg Fare / Air Miles = Route Yield
Route Yield * Load Factor = Passenger Rev per Available Seat Mile (ASM)
Passenger Rev per ASM - Cost per ASM = Op Profit per ASM