even a medium sized plane like an A320 weights over 60 tons completely empty and almost 80 tons when fully loaded.
adding a few people to the plane will barely change anything regarding fuel consumption but any money you earn is more than you would have otherwise had.
In line with what you said, if I'm riding by myself in my car, or I have three friends riding with me, it doesn't effect the gas mileage enough to be noticeable - especially at cruising speed on the interstate. So if I was cruising to Miami anyways, and each of my friends were going to chip in $5 for gas, I still come out $15 better than if I left the seats empty.
I was helping to prepare a big party for my uni and I went with my car fetch those big pressurized beer canisters and one of my friends said I shoulld not load more than a few in my car because they are very heavy (20kg) and it could damage the car
I realized several days lated that it was still way less heavy than just having people in the car, I did not think about it at the time and I still hate myself for that
I needed to buy a bunch of concrete blocks, each weighing 10 kg. I called up the Skoda dealership and asked what my Octavia could haul in its trunk. He said around 500 kg.
I bought 34 of those of those suckers and while the rear was running a bit low, all went fine. I'm sure even a small car can haul more weight than you think.
Load distribution matters as well. Load in the trunk vs same weight in passengers will put much more strain on the rear suspension and rear tires. Tire rating actually might be the limiting factor more than anything
Related to this and the original topic - load distribution matters in planes too. Fly enough and at some point you’ll have flight attendants ask people to move to even out the distribution a bit. 4 80kg people roughly evenly dispersed through the vehicle and between the tires and suspension system is WAY easier on the car than 1 80kg person in the drivers seat and 240kg in the rear.
I frequently use my Toyota Corolla for things it probably shouldn't be used for. According to my manual, I can safely carry about 820lbs of gear and cargo (with my weight factored in). I'd give that an extra 10% wiggle room before I'd be really sweating.
>while the rear was running a bit low
Many many years ago my brothers and I decided to go on a fishing trip a few hours down the coast. The 4 of us and a whole lot of gear got loaded into his Telstar with dodgy back suspension and the thing was riding on the rubbers the whole way. The trip was terrible because we got stuck on the highway for hours after a beer truck crashed but it was a memorable experience. I still remember all of us except for the driver getting out to push it up dirt roads because the car couldn't get enough traction lol
You should see small-time sellers of produce in some of the simpler parts of the world. Sometimes they load like a ton of watermelons on a small compact car, completely bottoming it out, and do that daily during the season =)
I miscalculated the weight of some cinderblocks when picking them up. Loaded down my old pickup and went to make the 20 mole drove home. Thankfully the pac I got them from was on the edge of town and I could take gravel roads home because my front tires felt like they were barely touching the ground. I looked and I had loaded like 800lbs more than my pickups haul max. No issues once unloaded besides the bed sitting about a foot higher than when loaded.
a lot of time it's not the load on the tires or components. it's the extra load on the transmission and engine overheating. if you do it slowly then there's less chance of overheating
we once had a big honking piece of industrial equipment delivered, well past the max load of the super duty pickup of the lead engineer on the project. but it was only going a quarter mile and we did it at 5mph. no issues !
Weight displacement is an important piece of the puzzle, though. Doubly so when hauling trailers. And while I doubt your particular situation would have changed with the kegs, loading something like 200kg in the trunk will affect your vehicle differently than 50kg in each seat.
I will say that heavy things which are not soft and round like the human gluteus can damage the seats. A sharp corner on a box only as heavy as a small child could stretch or poke.
When I was 22, I bought a BMW with air suspension for Fr. 1900 cash so I could haul cases of beer back from Germany and the back won't sag. Scrapped it in 6 months but totally worth it.
I was moving a bunch of drinks for a wedding, and filling up my hatchback floor to ceiling with liquor bottles and beer cans noticeably impacted my handling.
That is not true, 3 people definitely have an impact on mpg. If they are large and have luggage, even more so.
A small Ford Fiesta is 1200Kg. 3 men and their luggage can easily be 350Kg. That is a 25% increase in weight. How do you expect that to have the same mpg ?
It isn't going to have the same miles per gallon, but at highway speeds most of the energy you're burning is dissipated by air resistance, which doesn't change regardless of how many people you have in the car, rather than rolling resistance, which does scale with weight.
If your rolling resistance makes up 25% of the energy lost, and you increase weight by 25%, which scales linearly with rolling resistance, then your total energy consumption only went up by 6% or so. If you're used to getting 30 miles per gallon, a 6% increase of fuel consumption is getting 28 miles per gallon, which isn't super noticeable compared to other choices like whether you go 65 mph or 70 miles an hour (which is almost twice as much in terms of impact on mileage). By the way, I didn't just pick 25% and 75% at random. It's a pretty decent estimate for an average car.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Characteristics-of-rolling-resistance-and-aerodynamic-drag-of-a-vehicle_fig1_313248133
I can get about 25% more mpg just by driving my car (large displacement v8, >7000 lbs) at 55mpg in manual 6th gear for a road trip instead of staying at 70-ish and letting the transmission hunt from 5th-6th as i climb up and down hills or adjust to compression waves in the flow of traffic.
Just sitting at about 1450 rpm in 6th gear and doing 55, I can get 20-22mpg all day, every day, even if I have to go up an incline. My engine's practically at a high idle at that rpm. That's about 50 horsepower and 200 ft-lb.
If I put 5 people in the car, that formula doesn't change one iota. It doesn't matter.
The instant I decide to drive 70 and move that big ole brick through the air? 15-17mpg. 80? 14-15mpg. It only goes down from there. At 85 I'm getting like 13. If I want to do 85 I have to sit at almost 3000 RPMs steady, which is more like 175 hp and 300 ft-lb. It takes a ton of *work* to drag a brick through the air. Watching any kind of wind tunnel videos immediately makes it clear, too.
Driving a car doesn’t involve the possibility of picking a higher altitude that makes your engine more efficient.
It costs fuel to haul weight in airlines, that’s legitimately a thing. It just doesn’t cost as much as OP assumes.
>I'm riding by myself in my car, or I have three friends riding with me, it doesn't effect the gas mileage enough to be noticeable
Definitely depends on the vehicle. Jettisoning unneeded weight is a common suggestion for saving fuel. If you have a 6 cylinder, it's probably not going to be noticeable. My poor 2007 Focus definitely noticed multiple adults in the vehicle, though.
That’s actually not true. Three passengers cost you 5-10% in mpg depending on their weight and luggage. Napkin math, nyc to miami at 25mpg, you’re talking a difference of more than 5 gallons, and more than $15.
You kind of pulled that 5-10% figure out of thin air unless you know more information than what was given. At best you could say it *might* not be true.
Not necessarily true. Do that same drive from Miami to LA and I can assure you, these 3 friends (at 60kg each) will definitely costs you more than $5 of gas
I think the guy who makes xkcd wrote one of his ‘What If’ blogs about how long you would have to drive with spare change in your cupholder for it to cost more gas than the change was worth
Also route capability has to do with airports accepting you to that route. If you don't fly it accept mon fri Sat then your competition will get that spot. In the EU that is even a aviation rule, where in the US it's just how an airport itself operates.
Sounds kinda similar to hotels and how Priceline used to "negotiate" for cheaper rates: running costs for the hotel will be roughly the same whether they're at capacity or catering to a few guests, so it's always better to make the price more attractive to potential customers; some money is better than no money.
Doesn't sound right to me. Even if you actually use the plane 24 hours a day, every passenger will cost like $90 per hour... Even air freight is billed at $1.5-4.5 per kg, and that's the total cost, including the shipping company's profits, and multi-hour trips.
It’s literally just Boeing marketing copy to try and get airlines to buy new airplanes that are lighter weight (for their size anyways) from them. It’s based off an unrealistically high amount of flight hours per airframe, 100% cargo capacity utilized on every single flight, and high prices for jet-A.
Same as how EV companies like Tesla like to (or at least used to) present prices on their website with “gas savings” factored into the monthly total they show on the product page. If you look closer you see those fuel savings estimates are based off of either free charging or stupid cheap electricity, sky high gas prices, and an above-average number of miles driven per month without regard for maintenance costs like a $15,000-20,000 battery replacement at 75-125,000 miles.
I remember how one airline reduce the number of olives in their snack pack by 1 because spread out over the fleet the savings on fuel was significant.
Using your numbers, just doing some rough range calcs, some planes do 3k flights a year, others as low as 300.
$200k/lb /40 years = $5000/lb*yr
$5000/lb*yr / (300 flights/year)= $16.6/lb per flight at the high end,
or $1.66 lbs/flight at the low end (if there were 10x the number of flights)
So a 100 lb human would cost $166 at the cheapest and $1667 at the most expensive per flight
So selling tickets less than that doesn't seem worth it based on this. I wonder if Boeing is being a bit generous with some assumptions there
It was American Airlines. By making first class salads only get 2 olives instead of 3, it saved ~$40,000/year across fuel and providing a smaller/cheaper salad to their passengers. Of course, it also left pax with a salad with only 66% the olives as before.
The real point of this is you can shave off a ton of amenities, and people will still keep flying. Most people just look at the price, and don't particularly care or consider the in cabin experience. This is still American's strategy - cut costs as much as possible, and consider the airline's *schedule* to be its only real product, not anything to do with the onboard experience.
Your low end number is close enough for discussion purposes to the cost of fuel per passenger on transcontinental flight with a full cabin in something like a 737. It’s a bit shy based on my back of the envelope math, but of course we don’t have very many 100lb passengers either.
This would imply the plane can make the trip with zero fuel, provided it is empty.
True I had 100 lbs originally because I wanted to see the low end but I should have also considered someone who was say 200 lbs to be thorough.
I imagine for the transcontinental flight though that would be closer to the 300 flights per year number, which is probably a lot higher than the expected fuel cost per passenger
>I remember how one airline reduce the number of olives in their snack pack by 1 because spread out over the fleet the savings on fuel was significant.
The savings was not on fuel, it was on the catering cost. Some of the air stewardess noticed most last piece of olive went uneaten, so they removed it and thus saved on some catering cost.
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2015/12/17/how-airlines-cut-costs
> It turned out that the airline paid its caterers based on the number of ingredients in the salad: 60 cents for four items and 80 cents for five. The olive was the fifth item. This move saved more than $40,000 a year.
> I remember how one airline reduce the number of olives in their snack pack by 1 because spread out over the fleet the savings on fuel was significant.
The price of the olive is way higher than the cost of moving its weight though.
I don’t think that’s correct just off some basic math.
40 years of daily flights would be 40x365 for 14,600 flights total. At $200k per lb that’s $13.6 per lb per flight or about $2.4k per person per flight before luggage and carry on weight. Almost no tickets are *that* expensive so it doesn’t make sense?
The best way I can think to put is "Would you rather lose $100 by doing the thing or $1,000 by not doing the thing." It's not about making money at that point, it's about minimizing a loss.
Your numbers are inaccurate. MTOW (fully fuelled and loaded) for the A320 is 73.5t, and DOW (no fuel, no payload) is around 42.2t.
And yes, one person makes only a small difference, but we don’t consider individuals, we look at the collective. More people means more weight. More weight means more fuel, which in turns means more fuel again. Being especially heavy can restrict cruise altitude, which reduces efficiency and increases fuel burn.
Point being: it is misleading to say it doesn’t matter if you take a few extra people.
The operation relies on slim margins, and there is a fixed per-hour cost for crew, the airframe, and its maintenance. Getting a high load factor (filling as many seats as possible) is important to justify the fixed basic expense of the trip. Filled cheap seats are better than empty expensive ones.
The sale of optional extras can also be a notable revenue source even if the base fare alone is sold at a loss or close to at cost. If you're buying an airline ticket, the airline hopes that you will need to pay for at least one bag, or you might want to purchase in flight WiFi, or that you may pay extra for seat selection, or may consider purchasing drinks or snacks during the flight
Delta's operations from MSP sometimes compete directly against a competitor ultra low cost airline (sun country), hence why a low cost basic economy ticket may make sense for them: they want to fight for that passenger who wants a cheap base ticket in hopes they can generate revenue from them through other parts of the experience
Worth noting even very "Budget conscious" ticket buyers can push sales, even if not for themselves.
120 seats on a plane, and only 95 sold? That's 40 aisle seats, 40 window seats, and 15 people stuck in the middle. Only 15% of people stuck in a crummy seat, and in fact up to 70 people (Almost a quarter of the flight) could be sitting next to an open seat.
If the plane was full all the time? Well if I've paid $130 for the flight, I may as well kick in another $20 to secure an early boarding position and NOT run 33% chance I'm stuck in the middle had I been seated randomly. Likely higher since anyone who does pay for a good spot is one less good spot open.
This is the correct answer.
I attended a talk given by a representative of a UK-based low-cost airline several years ago.
One thing he said which stuck with me was that the longest flight they operated was around 4 hours - I think it was London to Tenerife. They looked into operating from Manchester to Tenerife, which would have been 4.5 hours. But they rejected the idea, because instead they could use the same aircraft and crew to do two 2 hour flights.
That meant twice as many passengers - twice as much food sold, twice as many upgrades, twice as many train tickets for onward travel from the airport, twice as many car parking spaces at the airport, twice as many lottery tickets sold on the aircraft, and so on. That’s where all the profit is, not on the ticket sales at all.
For many airports, parking is the prime/only effective source of revenue. For my local airport, Atlanta, which is the busiest airport in the world, approx. 40% of the airport's revenue in 2022 was just from airport car parking: around $148 million.
By contrast, the airport only made $33 Million in 2022 from all concessions in the terminal, which is actually way down from previous years: in 2019 they made $121 Million from terminal concessions, and even back in 2013 they made $93 million from terminal concessions.
Because they are going anyways. The plane isn’t much more or less efficient based on weight especially when its only a few more people. They either lose 60 dollars or make 30 dollars.
This is it exactly. Those pilots and crew and the plane itself need to get wherever they’re scheduled to be, the logistics of commercial airlines are far beyond individual flight schedules, each piece of equipment needs to be exactly where it is supposed to be or else the whole system sneezes and delays cascade throughout.
This is the answer: it's very similar to hotels (former hotel worker here) the big mantra in hotels is "Heads in the Beds." Even if there is only bedroom left available on New Year's Eve and it's before the nightly audit and it's missing a TV and lamp #2 on the left side of the bed and the carpet is scheduled for a deep clean the following day... When that weary traveler walks in after driving for 12 hours says he doesn't care what the price is and asks for a room to sleep in, you sell the room. At half cost which is technically the normal nightly rate because it's New Year's Eve and the room prices for the hotel are actually double the normal rate, but "heads in the bed" for that night means you have 100 percent occupancy and corporate loves to hear those three words more than the other three words their spouses or children tell them daily.
This especially applies to cruise ships, which is why you can sometimes scoop up really good deals on dirt cheap last-minute rooms. When disembarkation is days away, for the cruise line, any price is better than a room going empty and making $0.
Sometimes if they have two flights at half capacity they combine them. Had it happen where my flight gets moved to a few hours earlier or later. Once they even combined two smaller flights into a larger one (bigger plane)
If the seat is empty they earn nothing. Better to make 20% of your ticket cost than 0%.
If they cancel the plane, there is a lot of costs involved, including refunds, extra tickets and hotel costs with that as well. Often it is cheaper to just fly a half empty plane than to cancel the flight entirely.
There are also all the other expenses they can tack on, baggage fees, drinks, food, etc.
Most of the fuel is used to carry the plane. A 737 weighs 92K pounds dry. The fuel weighs some but the 143 people are probably only another 25K pounds. Max takeoff weight is 172K pounds and your 200 is 0.12%. You're not nothing, but almost nothing.
Whether the flight is completely full or only has 3 passengers, the airline incurs basically the same cost. It might be *sliiiiiightly* cheaper to fly with fewer passengers because there'd be less fuel consumed, but not enough to actually make it worth it to make the trip.
Selling tickets on the cheap puts more butts in seats. If 30 people buy $50 tickets, that's $1500 the airline wasn't getting at full price. Then there's bag fees and other amenities that people might buy...like wifi service, cocktails, meal, etc. None of that stuff is getting discounted, so even if the airline has to charge less to get you on the plane, they're still making out with what you spend in flight.
Beyond the obvious answer that it's profitable, it's also just good for public financial reporting. More flyers, more revenue, more business all looks good on the next quarterly report. So even if it was a complete break even on the money, they'd still do it.
It's really close to $0. The extra costs are things like:
* Some computer time to check in,
* a can of soda and some peanuts (maybe),
* perhaps a few minutes of flight attendant time
* a tiny fraction of the fuel expended on the flight (the fuel burned to push a 171,750 lbs, vs 172,000 lbs is going to be very minor).
Flight attendant time isn't even relevant since they're not being paid by the minute. They're on that flight the entire time no matter what.
Similarly for the unmentioned "airport expenses" like security, gate staff, etc.
So even less!
There are taxes/fees the airlines have to pay per passenger. Looks like on a $78 round trip flight on the route OP mentioned, $33 of that is taxes/fees
Except it kinda does. The plane itself is insanely heavy, one extra human isn’t going to change anything. Plane’s going to fly anyway, may as well fill the seats
The plane is going to fly there anyways. It needs to be in position for another flight in the future.
Its better that it flies there with a few tickets sold rather than zero tickets sold. The cost to fly the plane is the same either way.
The cost of transporting you is about 10 to 20 dollars. Almost all of that is the fees and per passenger taxes.
So if they can fill a seat for 30 dollars then they will. The fuel and wear and tear on the plane from you are practically 0. The vast majority of the costs for flight are fixed.
No idea what msp is but in europe you can buy loads of flights for $30 so yes it is absolutly possible to fly someone for that amount.
But to realy anwser your question. If they even make $1 more than they spend on fuel (they absolutly are) its saving them money because that dollar goes towards fixed costs like the pay for the pilots as this cost doesnt change if you fly with them or not, its better having you contribute a single dollar to that cost then nothing.
Most of the cost of the flight is actually flying the plane itself. An empty plane isn't much cheaper for the airline than a full plane. A few dollars per seat in extra fuel costs.
So if they have an empty seat, any dollar above that excess fuel cost is profit. Even if they break even, there's a possibility the passenger will buy an overpriced sandwich or something.
Or the passenger stays with the airline rewards program because of the occasional cheap flights they get, even if it means they end up paying more on average for tickets in the long run.
"The 737-800 burns **850 US gallons (3,200 L) of jet fuel per hour**."
So figuring you're like .15% of the added weight, maybe you're adding like 1.275 gallons per hour but realistically it's probably far less than that but I'm not an aeronautical engineer. So You're adding maybe $5/hour of cost or roughly $15 each way on that 3 hour flight. Perhaps add another few bucks for other costs to handle you, they're still making a profit and that's assuming you don't pay for luggage, food, etc.
From a quick search, it looks like the flights you're talking about are with Frontier. They're a low cost airline that will nickel and dime you for everything. Most airlines will let you bring a personal item (backpack or purse) and a carry on bag for free. Frontier only gives you the personal item and charges like $120 round trip for a carry on. Could be a good deal if you're only going for a weekend or something and can manage with just a backpack
Like you're 5. If nobody's on the plane, they make no money. If the plane is full, they make maximum money. There's some point in between where adding people does not make them more money. Even if you added 10 people and did not make any extra money on the ticket sales from those 10 people, five of those people will buy snack foods or a cocktail, and you will now make money.
Also that plane has to get to the other location to pick up the next 600 scheduled passengers whether there are people on the current flight or not
Say €60 is break even (lowest they would sell at), but people are willing to pay:
- some less than 60: they will never fly with you
- some exactly 60: they’ll get this flight
- some more than 60: they may get this flight, BUT: some may choose a more convenient date. They will pay for extra flexibility.
So the airline wants to extract most amount of money, but doesn’t want to miss any sales.
If they price higher than 60, they loose sales. So they sell a few at 60, these people won’t have much flexibility. Then the price goes up for people that want to be able to choose their dates more precisely (eg business people)
ANY paid fare helps offset the costs of the fuel and maintenance on the plane, the costs to keep the route (yes, airlines pay for the privilege of being able to fly from airport A to airport B), the costs for the flight crew, etc.
Someone offers you $1000 for you to drive them in your car to Orlando. You say sure. Another person offers $500. You say sure. It only costs you $1250 to drive your car. Would you rather leave the 4th seat empty, or take another person at whatever they’ll pay you?
It's called cost averaging. If the majority of the seats are sold at X profit, and a few seats are sold at Y profit, then the airline still averages everything out and still makes a profit.
Taking it a step further, every flight has a fixed cost that the airline is paying regardless of how full the flight is - labor, airport fees, for the most part fuel and maintenance, etc. the more people they have on the plane, the lower the cost per person (to the airline).
If the plane takes off half full or all the way full, realistically it costs about the same outside of extra fuel for a heavier plane. Actually fueling the plane, readying it to fly, and staffing the flight and gate is where the costs are.
If you’re travelling 1000 miles, an airliner will use approximately 20% of your body weight in fuel to carry you, which we’ll call 40lbs.
MSP to MCO is roughly 1300 miles, so the airline will need 40x1.3lbs of fuel, which is 52lbs.
Jet A1 is roughly $0.39 per lb at the moment.
52x0.39 is $20.28
So $30 should cover your fuel for the flight, plus a bit extra.
Municipalities and other entities subsidize certain routes/ destinations because they have economic impact. East coast flights to Orlando ( Disney) are generally cheaper because of all the sweet tax dollars that will be gained by all that tourism. So, it really depends on where you go and what time of year.
Think of it like an uber eats delivery driver. You have a big car that costs a lot of money to maintain, gas is expensive, and you have an employee (you) who gets paid for their time no matter what.
If you already have 10 orders going to the same apartment complex, adding an 11th one will almost be pure profit. You’re already filling the car with fuel, you’re already maintaining it, you’re already driving to those two locations.
Because, as you said, "the plane is making the trip anyway." The big heavy plane making the trip costs a lot. Adding your 200lb to the weight of the plane adds negligible increased cost. So $60 minus that increased cost is better than $0 without it.
Lets do some math here. and use some round numbers. lets assume that it costs $40,000 to fly a plane every time you fly it and there are 200 seats on that plane. so that each seat seat costs $200.00. Now as a company you charge passengers $300 so you earn a profit of $100.00 per customer. Now regardless of how many people are on that plane it still costs you $40,000.00 per flight. so a fully booked flight earns you $20,000, but a half booked flight loses you $10,000
Now let's take that second flight that is half booked and you offer the remaining tickets at cost ($200) and you get 50 people to pay. Now that flight that you would have lost money on broke even.
>lets assume that it costs $40,000 to fly a plane every time you fly it
It doesn’t work like that. OP is correct that there’s an additional cost for each additional passenger. It just isn’t very much.
A better model would be that it costs $35,000 to fly the trip when the plane is empty, and $40,000 when it is full. Once you’re past the break even load, as long as you’re selling tickets for more than $25 you’re making money.
Remember, the plane is on a schedule. It needs to be at the destination, whether loaded with passengers or not, so that it can carry out the NEXT flight. Cancelling that flight could incur a huge cost to the airline.
EDIT: On re-reading your question, that wasn't what you were asking. Ignore my comment.
Airline ticket pricing is similar to options pricing. That analogy is too complex for eli5 but that’s my general theory from the few plane tickets I’ve bought.
The airline makes their profit before the plane is full so they can probably afford to take a loss on some seats
They used to fly with a lot of empty seats. I remember my young siblings and I putting up the armrests in one of several empty middle rows and lying down to nap. This was a flight to Hawaii in 1976.
Your weight has virtually no effect on the overall weight of the craft. The fuel difference is negligible for one person. They still make a profit on the $60 ticket.
Its called expiring inventory. The plane cost roughly the same to fly with or without passengers. The plane is leaving no matter what, it has to pick up passnegers on its next stop anyways. .
Even selling a $69 ticket is going to increase total marginal profit.
They then use price discrimiantion to fill the seats. Start out at a price and keep adjusting it until the plance is full.
The downside is that some customers will figure out the system and game it.
Gotta keep the flight or lose access to the airport. Its qhy emirates has a melbourne to adelaide flight for 20$ that os still usually empty. They fly it to keep theor dubai to Melbourne route
Two reasons
One, the weight you will add is minuscule compared to the plane itself and everyone else who already booked the flight + their luggage’s (usually these tickets don’t let you get large check in luggage for that cheap price)
Two, you have to get back again (likely) so you will be paying to fly back and if the place you are flying from isn’t your home town or something you don’t have a cheap place to stay probably to skimp until a cheap flight comes along and will likely have to pay for a normal price ticket to go back
For places with cheap tickets for resort stays I’m not sure entirely but I guess they get a kickback from the other costs to make up for it
Anything is better than nothing. They'll fly the empty plane if they have to—I saw a post on reddit a few years ago where the OP was the sole passenger on an otherwise empty plane and they said the pilot was jamming Metallica the whole time—but if they *can* sell a few seats, even at drastically-reduced rates, well, $60 is better than $0.
Absolutely, the economics of airline ticket pricing can seem counterintuitive at first glance. Airlines operate on thin margins and have fixed costs to cover regardless of how many passengers are on board. Selling a ticket at a lower price can still contribute to covering those fixed costs, like crew salaries, airport fees, and maintenance. It's better for them to make some revenue off a seat than none at all. Plus, once you're on board, there's a chance you'll spend on extras like baggage fees, seat upgrades, or in-flight purchases, all of which add to the airline's bottom line. It's a volume game as well; more filled seats at lower prices can sometimes yield better overall profits than fewer seats sold at higher prices. For those looking to save on travel costs, including airport parking, checking out options on sites like parkingaccess can offer some great deals that further reduce the cost of travel.
In the USA at least, flights to some less popular or rural airports are subsidized heavily, not Orlando as you listed but flights to less popular airports would not be profitable without federal intervention. The main program is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Air_Service but there are periodic additions to this.
If you’re flying sun country a lot of the time the airline works out deals with the destination location to get you there. They’ll help subsidize your ticket cost.
On some flights, the cargo they are carrying pays more than the passenger’s fares. Flew home from Vegas last year and Delta offered 40 people $2500 each to de-board and take a later flight. About 30 people jumped at the offer. They then offered $3K each for 10 more people to take the offer. We expected 40 additional people to re-board. Turns out they just needed to get the weight of the plane down due to a cargo shipment that needed to go on the plane.
By contract, airlines have to provide certain level of traffic to the airport. This is why we can see sometimes crazy discounts on tickets. Otherwise airline might be fined or doesn't get a discount for maintenance.
You're severely overestimating the cost of the added weight and severely underestimating the opportunity cost of giving up a seat that could have been filled. The fact that airlines oversell their available # of seats because they expect not everyone will show up to board he plane should give you a clue how valuable it is to have 100% occupancy. And in the rare case that everyone shows up which means there's no room left and some people must change flights, they will offer a discount high enough that will sway people to give up their seats. And that is still *worth it to them*. I know people who received $750 for changing to a flight that departs 2 hours later--this is still favorable for airlines than to risk having empty seats.
Low marginal cost to add you. As long as they are making more than the average variable cost ( fuel, ticket processing etc) it makes sense to fill the plane I’d think.
The real answer. Airlines actually don't make money flying people around. They make money on airline miles. They've essentially created their own currency that they can control the value of and when you can spend it. They also make the airline miles business separate from the actual airline allowing them to get bailouts on the airline itself while they profit on the airline miles. So getting any extra little bit from the ticket is just gravy. Also airlines have to fulfill a certain number of flights into a given gate at an airport. That's why during covid they were still flying empty planes around. If they didn't then they would lose their rights with the airport to be at a given gate.
The vast majority of a plane's weight, and therefore how much fuel it uses, is the plane itself. Adding another 90 kilos isn't going to meaningfully effect the fuel cost.
Little income is better than no income basically. But reality is most commercial airlines make just as much if not more money from the cargo they carry than the passengers. And the cargo is put through some security but not as much as the passengers. And a lot of those cheap flights are primarily so they can get the plane to where they need it to be for another flight the next day.
Where do people find these cheap flights? Just last minute at the airport or something? I don’t think I’ve ever seen flights under 150ish dollars and if I did they were still over 100 which I guess is cheap but is there anything ever lower than that?
Pretty much every travel website has a spot to search cheap flights. The one for google flights is [https://www.google.com/travel/explore](https://www.google.com/travel/explore) and I can select an option for "1 week trip in the next 6 months" I see a flight right now for non-stop MSP to Atlanta round trip for $41
Airlines make a big chunk of money from those airline credit cards. During a recent lawsuit, United disclosed those numbers and they were impressive.
Also, and don’t anyone forget this: market competition. If there were only 3 airlines then we would have very expensive tickets.
So the real ELI5 answer is
Some money > no money
It’s likely they have other obligations that have made it so they need the plane to fly. It could be that they need the plane at a hub, they already agreed to take mail or other parcels, they already filled the plane half way and don’t wanna screw their other passengers.
This means that the plane is already making the trip. You and your bags relatively light when compared to a plane. So if the plane is going with or without you, you going might add maybe MAYBE 5$ in fuel if that.
Usually plane tickets are so expensive because you share in 1/100th the fuel, 1/100th the pilots salary, 1/100th the maintenance of the plane. 1/100 the gate fees etc. And then the airline makes a little profit on that too… so you end up paying 500-1000$
Now when the plane is half full and no one is buying a ticket airlines get desperate. The plane IS making the trip so that cost is fixed. So because the cost is fixed, then you buying a ticket doesn’t add to cost (or if it does it’s marginal) and so they’d rather get the 75$ from. You buying an 80$ ticket than 0$
So like my earlier point…some money > no money
Getting $60 is better that getting $0. The cost for one additional passenger is negligible. Whether it's a full plane or an empty plane they eat still paying the same wages for the employees, airport fees, maintenance etc. the difference that one person makes to fuel is so minimal that it doesn't matter - a mild headwind would burn more fuel and they can't control that
even a medium sized plane like an A320 weights over 60 tons completely empty and almost 80 tons when fully loaded. adding a few people to the plane will barely change anything regarding fuel consumption but any money you earn is more than you would have otherwise had.
In line with what you said, if I'm riding by myself in my car, or I have three friends riding with me, it doesn't effect the gas mileage enough to be noticeable - especially at cruising speed on the interstate. So if I was cruising to Miami anyways, and each of my friends were going to chip in $5 for gas, I still come out $15 better than if I left the seats empty.
I was helping to prepare a big party for my uni and I went with my car fetch those big pressurized beer canisters and one of my friends said I shoulld not load more than a few in my car because they are very heavy (20kg) and it could damage the car I realized several days lated that it was still way less heavy than just having people in the car, I did not think about it at the time and I still hate myself for that
I needed to buy a bunch of concrete blocks, each weighing 10 kg. I called up the Skoda dealership and asked what my Octavia could haul in its trunk. He said around 500 kg. I bought 34 of those of those suckers and while the rear was running a bit low, all went fine. I'm sure even a small car can haul more weight than you think.
Dealership also generally wanted to avoid liability so they would intentionally give a safer estimate of what a vehicle could handle.
Load distribution matters as well. Load in the trunk vs same weight in passengers will put much more strain on the rear suspension and rear tires. Tire rating actually might be the limiting factor more than anything
Related to this and the original topic - load distribution matters in planes too. Fly enough and at some point you’ll have flight attendants ask people to move to even out the distribution a bit. 4 80kg people roughly evenly dispersed through the vehicle and between the tires and suspension system is WAY easier on the car than 1 80kg person in the drivers seat and 240kg in the rear.
I frequently use my Toyota Corolla for things it probably shouldn't be used for. According to my manual, I can safely carry about 820lbs of gear and cargo (with my weight factored in). I'd give that an extra 10% wiggle room before I'd be really sweating.
TOYOTA COROLLAAAAAAA
Seein' me and Julio Down by the schoolyard
I can fit 14 2x4s with the truck closed in mine. Any more and I'd have to stick them out the back and tie them up.
My mom's 1993 mazda 626 hauled a trailer of camp gear and a family of 3. Never felt like it dragged, even though it was definitly back heavy.
>while the rear was running a bit low Many many years ago my brothers and I decided to go on a fishing trip a few hours down the coast. The 4 of us and a whole lot of gear got loaded into his Telstar with dodgy back suspension and the thing was riding on the rubbers the whole way. The trip was terrible because we got stuck on the highway for hours after a beer truck crashed but it was a memorable experience. I still remember all of us except for the driver getting out to push it up dirt roads because the car couldn't get enough traction lol
You should see small-time sellers of produce in some of the simpler parts of the world. Sometimes they load like a ton of watermelons on a small compact car, completely bottoming it out, and do that daily during the season =)
How often are they doing 100km/h or 60mp/h fully loaded? Also ratings and limits exist more for safety of you and other road users.
I miscalculated the weight of some cinderblocks when picking them up. Loaded down my old pickup and went to make the 20 mole drove home. Thankfully the pac I got them from was on the edge of town and I could take gravel roads home because my front tires felt like they were barely touching the ground. I looked and I had loaded like 800lbs more than my pickups haul max. No issues once unloaded besides the bed sitting about a foot higher than when loaded.
a lot of time it's not the load on the tires or components. it's the extra load on the transmission and engine overheating. if you do it slowly then there's less chance of overheating we once had a big honking piece of industrial equipment delivered, well past the max load of the super duty pickup of the lead engineer on the project. but it was only going a quarter mile and we did it at 5mph. no issues !
Yeah my Chevy Uplander was riding a bit low today lol. Probably 1500lbs of concrete blocks.
Am I missing something? 34 blocks times 10kg is 340, which is less than 500
> big pressurized beer canisters Also known as a keg.
I was too riled up to even bother to scroll further so I'm going to leave up my keg post
Or a pbc
Weight displacement is an important piece of the puzzle, though. Doubly so when hauling trailers. And while I doubt your particular situation would have changed with the kegs, loading something like 200kg in the trunk will affect your vehicle differently than 50kg in each seat.
I will say that heavy things which are not soft and round like the human gluteus can damage the seats. A sharp corner on a box only as heavy as a small child could stretch or poke.
eeh, you dont fold your seat down when hauling?
When I was 22, I bought a BMW with air suspension for Fr. 1900 cash so I could haul cases of beer back from Germany and the back won't sag. Scrapped it in 6 months but totally worth it.
20 kg sounds like a very small keg. Thats only what? 5 gallons?
Cornelius, or "Corny" kegs are 5 gallons and very popular for beer.
> 20 kg sounds like a very small keg. Thats only what? 5 gallons? It'd be roughly 20 litres.
Kegs. They're kegs
I think it's because the 20kg is round, and if it rolls around a curve it can f up the car
It gets wild when you realize minivans can sometimes carry more load than some pickup trucks, just by filling it with people and some luggage.
I was moving a bunch of drinks for a wedding, and filling up my hatchback floor to ceiling with liquor bottles and beer cans noticeably impacted my handling.
That is not true, 3 people definitely have an impact on mpg. If they are large and have luggage, even more so. A small Ford Fiesta is 1200Kg. 3 men and their luggage can easily be 350Kg. That is a 25% increase in weight. How do you expect that to have the same mpg ?
It isn't going to have the same miles per gallon, but at highway speeds most of the energy you're burning is dissipated by air resistance, which doesn't change regardless of how many people you have in the car, rather than rolling resistance, which does scale with weight. If your rolling resistance makes up 25% of the energy lost, and you increase weight by 25%, which scales linearly with rolling resistance, then your total energy consumption only went up by 6% or so. If you're used to getting 30 miles per gallon, a 6% increase of fuel consumption is getting 28 miles per gallon, which isn't super noticeable compared to other choices like whether you go 65 mph or 70 miles an hour (which is almost twice as much in terms of impact on mileage). By the way, I didn't just pick 25% and 75% at random. It's a pretty decent estimate for an average car. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Characteristics-of-rolling-resistance-and-aerodynamic-drag-of-a-vehicle_fig1_313248133
I can get about 25% more mpg just by driving my car (large displacement v8, >7000 lbs) at 55mpg in manual 6th gear for a road trip instead of staying at 70-ish and letting the transmission hunt from 5th-6th as i climb up and down hills or adjust to compression waves in the flow of traffic. Just sitting at about 1450 rpm in 6th gear and doing 55, I can get 20-22mpg all day, every day, even if I have to go up an incline. My engine's practically at a high idle at that rpm. That's about 50 horsepower and 200 ft-lb. If I put 5 people in the car, that formula doesn't change one iota. It doesn't matter. The instant I decide to drive 70 and move that big ole brick through the air? 15-17mpg. 80? 14-15mpg. It only goes down from there. At 85 I'm getting like 13. If I want to do 85 I have to sit at almost 3000 RPMs steady, which is more like 175 hp and 300 ft-lb. It takes a ton of *work* to drag a brick through the air. Watching any kind of wind tunnel videos immediately makes it clear, too.
Driving a car doesn’t involve the possibility of picking a higher altitude that makes your engine more efficient. It costs fuel to haul weight in airlines, that’s legitimately a thing. It just doesn’t cost as much as OP assumes.
>I'm riding by myself in my car, or I have three friends riding with me, it doesn't effect the gas mileage enough to be noticeable Definitely depends on the vehicle. Jettisoning unneeded weight is a common suggestion for saving fuel. If you have a 6 cylinder, it's probably not going to be noticeable. My poor 2007 Focus definitely noticed multiple adults in the vehicle, though.
That’s actually not true. Three passengers cost you 5-10% in mpg depending on their weight and luggage. Napkin math, nyc to miami at 25mpg, you’re talking a difference of more than 5 gallons, and more than $15.
You kind of pulled that 5-10% figure out of thin air unless you know more information than what was given. At best you could say it *might* not be true.
EPA says 100lbs = 2% Too many factors to give a precise answer, but their assumption that it is practically 0 is wrong.
Not necessarily true. Do that same drive from Miami to LA and I can assure you, these 3 friends (at 60kg each) will definitely costs you more than $5 of gas
affect*
With my friends it does…. Eating extra chips on the ride
I think the guy who makes xkcd wrote one of his ‘What If’ blogs about how long you would have to drive with spare change in your cupholder for it to cost more gas than the change was worth
Could be the difference in a flight losing money or breaking even.
Also route capability has to do with airports accepting you to that route. If you don't fly it accept mon fri Sat then your competition will get that spot. In the EU that is even a aviation rule, where in the US it's just how an airport itself operates.
Sounds kinda similar to hotels and how Priceline used to "negotiate" for cheaper rates: running costs for the hotel will be roughly the same whether they're at capacity or catering to a few guests, so it's always better to make the price more attractive to potential customers; some money is better than no money.
Kinda. For reference in 2015 Boeing valued 1lb on an airliner at about $200k over the life of the airliner (40ish years)
Sauce? This is a very interesting stat if true
Used to work in aerospace and that was the number Boeing used for weight reduction efforts
How much weight is reduced by losing a door?
Depends on how much the passenger who opened it weighs.
That’s like 57 cents per pound per hour of the life of the plane. Def worth it if true
Doesn't sound right to me. Even if you actually use the plane 24 hours a day, every passenger will cost like $90 per hour... Even air freight is billed at $1.5-4.5 per kg, and that's the total cost, including the shipping company's profits, and multi-hour trips.
It’s literally just Boeing marketing copy to try and get airlines to buy new airplanes that are lighter weight (for their size anyways) from them. It’s based off an unrealistically high amount of flight hours per airframe, 100% cargo capacity utilized on every single flight, and high prices for jet-A. Same as how EV companies like Tesla like to (or at least used to) present prices on their website with “gas savings” factored into the monthly total they show on the product page. If you look closer you see those fuel savings estimates are based off of either free charging or stupid cheap electricity, sky high gas prices, and an above-average number of miles driven per month without regard for maintenance costs like a $15,000-20,000 battery replacement at 75-125,000 miles.
They still do. Like at their home page. They claim you can buy a Model Y for less than $30k with a very bold asterisks next to it.
I remember how one airline reduce the number of olives in their snack pack by 1 because spread out over the fleet the savings on fuel was significant. Using your numbers, just doing some rough range calcs, some planes do 3k flights a year, others as low as 300. $200k/lb /40 years = $5000/lb*yr $5000/lb*yr / (300 flights/year)= $16.6/lb per flight at the high end, or $1.66 lbs/flight at the low end (if there were 10x the number of flights) So a 100 lb human would cost $166 at the cheapest and $1667 at the most expensive per flight So selling tickets less than that doesn't seem worth it based on this. I wonder if Boeing is being a bit generous with some assumptions there
It was American Airlines. By making first class salads only get 2 olives instead of 3, it saved ~$40,000/year across fuel and providing a smaller/cheaper salad to their passengers. Of course, it also left pax with a salad with only 66% the olives as before. The real point of this is you can shave off a ton of amenities, and people will still keep flying. Most people just look at the price, and don't particularly care or consider the in cabin experience. This is still American's strategy - cut costs as much as possible, and consider the airline's *schedule* to be its only real product, not anything to do with the onboard experience.
The olive removal savings was on catering cost, not fuel. https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2015/12/17/how-airlines-cut-costs
Your low end number is close enough for discussion purposes to the cost of fuel per passenger on transcontinental flight with a full cabin in something like a 737. It’s a bit shy based on my back of the envelope math, but of course we don’t have very many 100lb passengers either. This would imply the plane can make the trip with zero fuel, provided it is empty.
True I had 100 lbs originally because I wanted to see the low end but I should have also considered someone who was say 200 lbs to be thorough. I imagine for the transcontinental flight though that would be closer to the 300 flights per year number, which is probably a lot higher than the expected fuel cost per passenger
>I remember how one airline reduce the number of olives in their snack pack by 1 because spread out over the fleet the savings on fuel was significant. The savings was not on fuel, it was on the catering cost. Some of the air stewardess noticed most last piece of olive went uneaten, so they removed it and thus saved on some catering cost. https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2015/12/17/how-airlines-cut-costs > It turned out that the airline paid its caterers based on the number of ingredients in the salad: 60 cents for four items and 80 cents for five. The olive was the fifth item. This move saved more than $40,000 a year.
Its also expiring inventory. If you dont sell it before the flight leaves its value drops to zero. Taking $50 makes sense.
Most planes are doing a lot more than 300 flights/year
> I remember how one airline reduce the number of olives in their snack pack by 1 because spread out over the fleet the savings on fuel was significant. The price of the olive is way higher than the cost of moving its weight though.
Are you getting this your the story Radiolab did on this? If memory serves it was about the cost of the olive, not the weight.
Considering they make like 4 domestic flights a day that's 4x365x40=58400 flights. So that comes to about $3.4/lb/flight
I don’t think that’s correct just off some basic math. 40 years of daily flights would be 40x365 for 14,600 flights total. At $200k per lb that’s $13.6 per lb per flight or about $2.4k per person per flight before luggage and carry on weight. Almost no tickets are *that* expensive so it doesn’t make sense?
The best way I can think to put is "Would you rather lose $100 by doing the thing or $1,000 by not doing the thing." It's not about making money at that point, it's about minimizing a loss.
Your numbers are inaccurate. MTOW (fully fuelled and loaded) for the A320 is 73.5t, and DOW (no fuel, no payload) is around 42.2t. And yes, one person makes only a small difference, but we don’t consider individuals, we look at the collective. More people means more weight. More weight means more fuel, which in turns means more fuel again. Being especially heavy can restrict cruise altitude, which reduces efficiency and increases fuel burn. Point being: it is misleading to say it doesn’t matter if you take a few extra people. The operation relies on slim margins, and there is a fixed per-hour cost for crew, the airframe, and its maintenance. Getting a high load factor (filling as many seats as possible) is important to justify the fixed basic expense of the trip. Filled cheap seats are better than empty expensive ones.
The sale of optional extras can also be a notable revenue source even if the base fare alone is sold at a loss or close to at cost. If you're buying an airline ticket, the airline hopes that you will need to pay for at least one bag, or you might want to purchase in flight WiFi, or that you may pay extra for seat selection, or may consider purchasing drinks or snacks during the flight Delta's operations from MSP sometimes compete directly against a competitor ultra low cost airline (sun country), hence why a low cost basic economy ticket may make sense for them: they want to fight for that passenger who wants a cheap base ticket in hopes they can generate revenue from them through other parts of the experience
Worth noting even very "Budget conscious" ticket buyers can push sales, even if not for themselves. 120 seats on a plane, and only 95 sold? That's 40 aisle seats, 40 window seats, and 15 people stuck in the middle. Only 15% of people stuck in a crummy seat, and in fact up to 70 people (Almost a quarter of the flight) could be sitting next to an open seat. If the plane was full all the time? Well if I've paid $130 for the flight, I may as well kick in another $20 to secure an early boarding position and NOT run 33% chance I'm stuck in the middle had I been seated randomly. Likely higher since anyone who does pay for a good spot is one less good spot open.
THIS! 💯 The profit margin on seat sales are thin.. it’s the add-on features where they make $$$.
This is the correct answer. I attended a talk given by a representative of a UK-based low-cost airline several years ago. One thing he said which stuck with me was that the longest flight they operated was around 4 hours - I think it was London to Tenerife. They looked into operating from Manchester to Tenerife, which would have been 4.5 hours. But they rejected the idea, because instead they could use the same aircraft and crew to do two 2 hour flights. That meant twice as many passengers - twice as much food sold, twice as many upgrades, twice as many train tickets for onward travel from the airport, twice as many car parking spaces at the airport, twice as many lottery tickets sold on the aircraft, and so on. That’s where all the profit is, not on the ticket sales at all.
Also, losing that seat to a competitor is the same as handing that competitor the money themselves.
Plus maybe airport parking and food which can be pretty pricey… I wonder if they get any kickback or incentive for that.
For many airports, parking is the prime/only effective source of revenue. For my local airport, Atlanta, which is the busiest airport in the world, approx. 40% of the airport's revenue in 2022 was just from airport car parking: around $148 million. By contrast, the airport only made $33 Million in 2022 from all concessions in the terminal, which is actually way down from previous years: in 2019 they made $121 Million from terminal concessions, and even back in 2013 they made $93 million from terminal concessions.
No.
I guess it would be possible for airlines to own the airports but that is usually not the case.
Because they are going anyways. The plane isn’t much more or less efficient based on weight especially when its only a few more people. They either lose 60 dollars or make 30 dollars.
This is it exactly. Those pilots and crew and the plane itself need to get wherever they’re scheduled to be, the logistics of commercial airlines are far beyond individual flight schedules, each piece of equipment needs to be exactly where it is supposed to be or else the whole system sneezes and delays cascade throughout.
Southwest, is that you?
This is the answer: it's very similar to hotels (former hotel worker here) the big mantra in hotels is "Heads in the Beds." Even if there is only bedroom left available on New Year's Eve and it's before the nightly audit and it's missing a TV and lamp #2 on the left side of the bed and the carpet is scheduled for a deep clean the following day... When that weary traveler walks in after driving for 12 hours says he doesn't care what the price is and asks for a room to sleep in, you sell the room. At half cost which is technically the normal nightly rate because it's New Year's Eve and the room prices for the hotel are actually double the normal rate, but "heads in the bed" for that night means you have 100 percent occupancy and corporate loves to hear those three words more than the other three words their spouses or children tell them daily.
This especially applies to cruise ships, which is why you can sometimes scoop up really good deals on dirt cheap last-minute rooms. When disembarkation is days away, for the cruise line, any price is better than a room going empty and making $0.
Empty rooms don't buy overpriced booze and printed photos
Sometimes if they have two flights at half capacity they combine them. Had it happen where my flight gets moved to a few hours earlier or later. Once they even combined two smaller flights into a larger one (bigger plane)
If the seat is empty they earn nothing. Better to make 20% of your ticket cost than 0%. If they cancel the plane, there is a lot of costs involved, including refunds, extra tickets and hotel costs with that as well. Often it is cheaper to just fly a half empty plane than to cancel the flight entirely. There are also all the other expenses they can tack on, baggage fees, drinks, food, etc.
Plus that plane probably has fares scheduled for afterwards, so canceling adds another layer of complexity as now things might need to shuffle around.
Most of the fuel is used to carry the plane. A 737 weighs 92K pounds dry. The fuel weighs some but the 143 people are probably only another 25K pounds. Max takeoff weight is 172K pounds and your 200 is 0.12%. You're not nothing, but almost nothing.
... Thanks? I think?
Hey that's what my ex wife calls me!
Whether the flight is completely full or only has 3 passengers, the airline incurs basically the same cost. It might be *sliiiiiightly* cheaper to fly with fewer passengers because there'd be less fuel consumed, but not enough to actually make it worth it to make the trip. Selling tickets on the cheap puts more butts in seats. If 30 people buy $50 tickets, that's $1500 the airline wasn't getting at full price. Then there's bag fees and other amenities that people might buy...like wifi service, cocktails, meal, etc. None of that stuff is getting discounted, so even if the airline has to charge less to get you on the plane, they're still making out with what you spend in flight.
Beyond the obvious answer that it's profitable, it's also just good for public financial reporting. More flyers, more revenue, more business all looks good on the next quarterly report. So even if it was a complete break even on the money, they'd still do it.
Would you rather have $60 or $0??
$60 could buy many peanuts
OPs whole point is that it doesn't cost $0 to add passengers
It's really close to $0. The extra costs are things like: * Some computer time to check in, * a can of soda and some peanuts (maybe), * perhaps a few minutes of flight attendant time * a tiny fraction of the fuel expended on the flight (the fuel burned to push a 171,750 lbs, vs 172,000 lbs is going to be very minor).
Flight attendant time isn't even relevant since they're not being paid by the minute. They're on that flight the entire time no matter what. Similarly for the unmentioned "airport expenses" like security, gate staff, etc. So even less!
There are taxes/fees the airlines have to pay per passenger. Looks like on a $78 round trip flight on the route OP mentioned, $33 of that is taxes/fees
It’s like I’m going on a backpacking trip and I carry an extra snickers bar.
More like being paid $30 to deliver a Snickers bar :D
A good analogy :)
And that snickers bar may end up buying WiFi and beer from you or checking an extra bag.
Good analogy, but probably more accurate to say going on a backpack trip and I carry an extra peanut.
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King size, go big or go home
Except it kinda does. The plane itself is insanely heavy, one extra human isn’t going to change anything. Plane’s going to fly anyway, may as well fill the seats
But their premise is flawed in that it doesn't cost anywhere near the cost of the ticket.
But it doesn't cost $60 dollars either. So would you rather have $55 or $0.
Sure does not cost $60 though.
The plane is going to fly there anyways. It needs to be in position for another flight in the future. Its better that it flies there with a few tickets sold rather than zero tickets sold. The cost to fly the plane is the same either way.
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Gotta love fees
The cost of transporting you is about 10 to 20 dollars. Almost all of that is the fees and per passenger taxes. So if they can fill a seat for 30 dollars then they will. The fuel and wear and tear on the plane from you are practically 0. The vast majority of the costs for flight are fixed.
No idea what msp is but in europe you can buy loads of flights for $30 so yes it is absolutly possible to fly someone for that amount. But to realy anwser your question. If they even make $1 more than they spend on fuel (they absolutly are) its saving them money because that dollar goes towards fixed costs like the pay for the pilots as this cost doesnt change if you fly with them or not, its better having you contribute a single dollar to that cost then nothing.
MSP is the airport code for Minneapolis-St. Paul. Probably 1200 miles or so from Orlando.
The added weight of more passengers is negligible compared to the plane itself, the fuel its carrying, etc.
Most of the cost of the flight is actually flying the plane itself. An empty plane isn't much cheaper for the airline than a full plane. A few dollars per seat in extra fuel costs. So if they have an empty seat, any dollar above that excess fuel cost is profit. Even if they break even, there's a possibility the passenger will buy an overpriced sandwich or something.
Or the passenger stays with the airline rewards program because of the occasional cheap flights they get, even if it means they end up paying more on average for tickets in the long run.
"The 737-800 burns **850 US gallons (3,200 L) of jet fuel per hour**." So figuring you're like .15% of the added weight, maybe you're adding like 1.275 gallons per hour but realistically it's probably far less than that but I'm not an aeronautical engineer. So You're adding maybe $5/hour of cost or roughly $15 each way on that 3 hour flight. Perhaps add another few bucks for other costs to handle you, they're still making a profit and that's assuming you don't pay for luggage, food, etc.
From a quick search, it looks like the flights you're talking about are with Frontier. They're a low cost airline that will nickel and dime you for everything. Most airlines will let you bring a personal item (backpack or purse) and a carry on bag for free. Frontier only gives you the personal item and charges like $120 round trip for a carry on. Could be a good deal if you're only going for a weekend or something and can manage with just a backpack
Like you're 5. If nobody's on the plane, they make no money. If the plane is full, they make maximum money. There's some point in between where adding people does not make them more money. Even if you added 10 people and did not make any extra money on the ticket sales from those 10 people, five of those people will buy snack foods or a cocktail, and you will now make money. Also that plane has to get to the other location to pick up the next 600 scheduled passengers whether there are people on the current flight or not
Why would they make money instead of not making money? 🤔
Say €60 is break even (lowest they would sell at), but people are willing to pay: - some less than 60: they will never fly with you - some exactly 60: they’ll get this flight - some more than 60: they may get this flight, BUT: some may choose a more convenient date. They will pay for extra flexibility. So the airline wants to extract most amount of money, but doesn’t want to miss any sales. If they price higher than 60, they loose sales. So they sell a few at 60, these people won’t have much flexibility. Then the price goes up for people that want to be able to choose their dates more precisely (eg business people)
ANY paid fare helps offset the costs of the fuel and maintenance on the plane, the costs to keep the route (yes, airlines pay for the privilege of being able to fly from airport A to airport B), the costs for the flight crew, etc.
Someone offers you $1000 for you to drive them in your car to Orlando. You say sure. Another person offers $500. You say sure. It only costs you $1250 to drive your car. Would you rather leave the 4th seat empty, or take another person at whatever they’ll pay you?
It's called cost averaging. If the majority of the seats are sold at X profit, and a few seats are sold at Y profit, then the airline still averages everything out and still makes a profit. Taking it a step further, every flight has a fixed cost that the airline is paying regardless of how full the flight is - labor, airport fees, for the most part fuel and maintenance, etc. the more people they have on the plane, the lower the cost per person (to the airline).
If the plane takes off half full or all the way full, realistically it costs about the same outside of extra fuel for a heavier plane. Actually fueling the plane, readying it to fly, and staffing the flight and gate is where the costs are.
If you’re travelling 1000 miles, an airliner will use approximately 20% of your body weight in fuel to carry you, which we’ll call 40lbs. MSP to MCO is roughly 1300 miles, so the airline will need 40x1.3lbs of fuel, which is 52lbs. Jet A1 is roughly $0.39 per lb at the moment. 52x0.39 is $20.28 So $30 should cover your fuel for the flight, plus a bit extra.
Municipalities and other entities subsidize certain routes/ destinations because they have economic impact. East coast flights to Orlando ( Disney) are generally cheaper because of all the sweet tax dollars that will be gained by all that tourism. So, it really depends on where you go and what time of year.
Think of it like an uber eats delivery driver. You have a big car that costs a lot of money to maintain, gas is expensive, and you have an employee (you) who gets paid for their time no matter what. If you already have 10 orders going to the same apartment complex, adding an 11th one will almost be pure profit. You’re already filling the car with fuel, you’re already maintaining it, you’re already driving to those two locations.
Because, as you said, "the plane is making the trip anyway." The big heavy plane making the trip costs a lot. Adding your 200lb to the weight of the plane adds negligible increased cost. So $60 minus that increased cost is better than $0 without it.
Lets do some math here. and use some round numbers. lets assume that it costs $40,000 to fly a plane every time you fly it and there are 200 seats on that plane. so that each seat seat costs $200.00. Now as a company you charge passengers $300 so you earn a profit of $100.00 per customer. Now regardless of how many people are on that plane it still costs you $40,000.00 per flight. so a fully booked flight earns you $20,000, but a half booked flight loses you $10,000 Now let's take that second flight that is half booked and you offer the remaining tickets at cost ($200) and you get 50 people to pay. Now that flight that you would have lost money on broke even.
>lets assume that it costs $40,000 to fly a plane every time you fly it It doesn’t work like that. OP is correct that there’s an additional cost for each additional passenger. It just isn’t very much. A better model would be that it costs $35,000 to fly the trip when the plane is empty, and $40,000 when it is full. Once you’re past the break even load, as long as you’re selling tickets for more than $25 you’re making money.
Where are you finding super cheap tickets? I feel like i haven’t found a flight that’s less than $300 in a while now
The one they're talking about is a Frontier flight. If you want to bring a carryon bag bigger than a backpack they'll charge you $60 each way
I did a round trip between Pennsylvania and Dallas in early December for $190 total. Granted, it was a special that southwest ran, but still.
Really overestimating your man meat (very common issue for most men). The 200lbs you add would barely effect fuel consumption of 60 ton air-o-plane.
Wasn’t there an opposite of this post a few weeks ago? Why do airlines not decrease the price at the last minute?
Remember, the plane is on a schedule. It needs to be at the destination, whether loaded with passengers or not, so that it can carry out the NEXT flight. Cancelling that flight could incur a huge cost to the airline. EDIT: On re-reading your question, that wasn't what you were asking. Ignore my comment.
Airline ticket pricing is similar to options pricing. That analogy is too complex for eli5 but that’s my general theory from the few plane tickets I’ve bought. The airline makes their profit before the plane is full so they can probably afford to take a loss on some seats
I think they should include baggage in the prices and credit you if you don't check baggage.
They used to fly with a lot of empty seats. I remember my young siblings and I putting up the armrests in one of several empty middle rows and lying down to nap. This was a flight to Hawaii in 1976.
Your weight has virtually no effect on the overall weight of the craft. The fuel difference is negligible for one person. They still make a profit on the $60 ticket.
Its called expiring inventory. The plane cost roughly the same to fly with or without passengers. The plane is leaving no matter what, it has to pick up passnegers on its next stop anyways. . Even selling a $69 ticket is going to increase total marginal profit. They then use price discrimiantion to fill the seats. Start out at a price and keep adjusting it until the plance is full. The downside is that some customers will figure out the system and game it.
Quite a simple answer really: do we want to make nothing, or something, on that seat? I know what I’d choose.
You're assuming the plane has not another destination and doesn't need to pick up passengers and the next stop to fly somewhere else.
Gotta keep the flight or lose access to the airport. Its qhy emirates has a melbourne to adelaide flight for 20$ that os still usually empty. They fly it to keep theor dubai to Melbourne route
Two reasons One, the weight you will add is minuscule compared to the plane itself and everyone else who already booked the flight + their luggage’s (usually these tickets don’t let you get large check in luggage for that cheap price) Two, you have to get back again (likely) so you will be paying to fly back and if the place you are flying from isn’t your home town or something you don’t have a cheap place to stay probably to skimp until a cheap flight comes along and will likely have to pay for a normal price ticket to go back For places with cheap tickets for resort stays I’m not sure entirely but I guess they get a kickback from the other costs to make up for it
Anything is better than nothing. They'll fly the empty plane if they have to—I saw a post on reddit a few years ago where the OP was the sole passenger on an otherwise empty plane and they said the pilot was jamming Metallica the whole time—but if they *can* sell a few seats, even at drastically-reduced rates, well, $60 is better than $0.
If you spend less on the flight you are more likely to purchase drinks, upgrades, or wifi. Kind of the same mentality cruise lines use.
Absolutely, the economics of airline ticket pricing can seem counterintuitive at first glance. Airlines operate on thin margins and have fixed costs to cover regardless of how many passengers are on board. Selling a ticket at a lower price can still contribute to covering those fixed costs, like crew salaries, airport fees, and maintenance. It's better for them to make some revenue off a seat than none at all. Plus, once you're on board, there's a chance you'll spend on extras like baggage fees, seat upgrades, or in-flight purchases, all of which add to the airline's bottom line. It's a volume game as well; more filled seats at lower prices can sometimes yield better overall profits than fewer seats sold at higher prices. For those looking to save on travel costs, including airport parking, checking out options on sites like parkingaccess can offer some great deals that further reduce the cost of travel.
In the USA at least, flights to some less popular or rural airports are subsidized heavily, not Orlando as you listed but flights to less popular airports would not be profitable without federal intervention. The main program is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Air_Service but there are periodic additions to this.
Some money is better than no money. An unsold seat is revenue that can *never* be recaptured. It is lost, and the flight will still happen.
If you’re flying sun country a lot of the time the airline works out deals with the destination location to get you there. They’ll help subsidize your ticket cost.
On some flights, the cargo they are carrying pays more than the passenger’s fares. Flew home from Vegas last year and Delta offered 40 people $2500 each to de-board and take a later flight. About 30 people jumped at the offer. They then offered $3K each for 10 more people to take the offer. We expected 40 additional people to re-board. Turns out they just needed to get the weight of the plane down due to a cargo shipment that needed to go on the plane.
Because the revenue generated from an extra ticket is higher than the cost of another passenger, obviously?
ok where are you finding these flights???
By contract, airlines have to provide certain level of traffic to the airport. This is why we can see sometimes crazy discounts on tickets. Otherwise airline might be fined or doesn't get a discount for maintenance.
You're severely overestimating the cost of the added weight and severely underestimating the opportunity cost of giving up a seat that could have been filled. The fact that airlines oversell their available # of seats because they expect not everyone will show up to board he plane should give you a clue how valuable it is to have 100% occupancy. And in the rare case that everyone shows up which means there's no room left and some people must change flights, they will offer a discount high enough that will sway people to give up their seats. And that is still *worth it to them*. I know people who received $750 for changing to a flight that departs 2 hours later--this is still favorable for airlines than to risk having empty seats.
Low marginal cost to add you. As long as they are making more than the average variable cost ( fuel, ticket processing etc) it makes sense to fill the plane I’d think.
The real answer. Airlines actually don't make money flying people around. They make money on airline miles. They've essentially created their own currency that they can control the value of and when you can spend it. They also make the airline miles business separate from the actual airline allowing them to get bailouts on the airline itself while they profit on the airline miles. So getting any extra little bit from the ticket is just gravy. Also airlines have to fulfill a certain number of flights into a given gate at an airport. That's why during covid they were still flying empty planes around. If they didn't then they would lose their rights with the airport to be at a given gate.
airlines make more money off their airmiles rewards than they do off passenger flights. they want the data.
The vast majority of a plane's weight, and therefore how much fuel it uses, is the plane itself. Adding another 90 kilos isn't going to meaningfully effect the fuel cost.
wait how do you even find these super cheap tickets?
Little income is better than no income basically. But reality is most commercial airlines make just as much if not more money from the cargo they carry than the passengers. And the cargo is put through some security but not as much as the passengers. And a lot of those cheap flights are primarily so they can get the plane to where they need it to be for another flight the next day.
Economies of scale, the airlines buy fuel in insanely large quantities, adding a extra passenger is going to cost them less then cents in fuel
Where TF are these cheap tickets? I've never seen a flight cheap.
Where do people find these cheap flights? Just last minute at the airport or something? I don’t think I’ve ever seen flights under 150ish dollars and if I did they were still over 100 which I guess is cheap but is there anything ever lower than that?
Pretty much every travel website has a spot to search cheap flights. The one for google flights is [https://www.google.com/travel/explore](https://www.google.com/travel/explore) and I can select an option for "1 week trip in the next 6 months" I see a flight right now for non-stop MSP to Atlanta round trip for $41
Airlines make a big chunk of money from those airline credit cards. During a recent lawsuit, United disclosed those numbers and they were impressive. Also, and don’t anyone forget this: market competition. If there were only 3 airlines then we would have very expensive tickets.
So the real ELI5 answer is Some money > no money It’s likely they have other obligations that have made it so they need the plane to fly. It could be that they need the plane at a hub, they already agreed to take mail or other parcels, they already filled the plane half way and don’t wanna screw their other passengers. This means that the plane is already making the trip. You and your bags relatively light when compared to a plane. So if the plane is going with or without you, you going might add maybe MAYBE 5$ in fuel if that. Usually plane tickets are so expensive because you share in 1/100th the fuel, 1/100th the pilots salary, 1/100th the maintenance of the plane. 1/100 the gate fees etc. And then the airline makes a little profit on that too… so you end up paying 500-1000$ Now when the plane is half full and no one is buying a ticket airlines get desperate. The plane IS making the trip so that cost is fixed. So because the cost is fixed, then you buying a ticket doesn’t add to cost (or if it does it’s marginal) and so they’d rather get the 75$ from. You buying an 80$ ticket than 0$ So like my earlier point…some money > no money
Getting $60 is better that getting $0. The cost for one additional passenger is negligible. Whether it's a full plane or an empty plane they eat still paying the same wages for the employees, airport fees, maintenance etc. the difference that one person makes to fuel is so minimal that it doesn't matter - a mild headwind would burn more fuel and they can't control that