Obviously numbers differ so we can only ballpark this, unless we have someone who can give exact examples. I was trying to think through the payback period on an airplane during a flight from LAX to Bangkok. $1,100 round-trip ticket. If I consider myself an average fare, x 350 seats = $385,000 in revenues.

I'm not sure how business and first class factors in, so I'll round up to $500,000 in fares.

I believe the cost of most high-capacity jetliners is over $200 million, is that correct? Seems like an insane amount to recover!

I think 50% of the revenues going to overhead is a fairly generous allowance, I would actually expect more than that. But let's say the airline retains $250,000. So now they're looking at 800 flights to pay off their plane assuming no interest costs. That's a hell of a lot of time spent in the red.

Maybe someone who understands numbers better can offer some more insight, thanks.

Here's another over-simplistic view...

Say you want to buy a car and use it to provide UberX service. You finance the car for 5 years at a certain percentage rate. Car payments are $X/mo. You need to make enough money so that you cover...

* Car payment
* Insurance
* Fuel
* Maintenance
* UberX fees
* Your salary

Plus it would also be nice to make a little more money on top of that (called profit). Then it's pretty easy to see that you need to make X trips to/from downtown and the airport in order to make a profit and pay off the car without any financial hardships.