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According to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc First/business class seats are where the airlines mak
by clarkenheim 8y ago
According to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc First/business class seats are where the airlines make all of their money, so Concord would be economically viable today.
- adolph 8y agoWouldn’t a more costly to produce product eliminate the large margin of existing first/business class?
- londons_explore 8y agoIf true, concord alone would be viable, but a combination of concord and regular planes on the same route would lead to all the business passengers taking concord, and the economy ones left in standard planes, which would no longer be viable.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoIn that case you could raise the price of Concorde tickets to push surplus business customers back to regular planes. But this raises the question, why would you even want to bother with Concorde in the first place? It only makes sense if you could attract new business class customers, who would take the faster trip but wouldn't take the slower one at all.
- euyyn 8y agoBecause you take them off the competition.
- mshook 8y agoAt the same time, when Concorde stopped flying after the accident in 2000, people who used to fly on her, flew on other things, so these passengers weren't lost revenue wise.
- euyyn 8y agoA significant share of those customers must have been lost by the two companies that flew the Concorde, as the alternatives to it are commoditized and offered by many other companies.
- lmm 8y agoSome people didn't fly at all when they would've flown if a Concorde had been available. And those who did fly on other planes paid significantly less.
- jonknee 8y agoThat was also the case back when Concord was in service...
- darkmighty 8y agoWhile I'm sure most profits/margin come from first/business class, I think that's only viable because the large number of economic class passengers help marginalize the cost per passenger. To give a concrete example, suppose the airline is flying 20 business seats per flight. The cost of those seats to the airline if it had no economy class, and it were forced to allocate an entire plane for them would be immense -- marginal the cost per seat would be (illustration) ~Airplane_Cost/20+Accomodation_Cost. Now suppose a current airline will carry perhaps 200 economy class passengers where it makes 0 profit. The marginal cost of the business class seats to the airline now will be much lower, something like ~Airplane Cost/(200+20)+Accomodation_Cost. So the airline don't need economy class to make profit, they need them to create economies of scale that bring down their cost for the high margin customers.
- ggg9990 8y agoI have been on a 747 that was business class only (Singapore Airlines). But the economy class passengers are definitely required for scale on most flights.
- samstave 8y agoYeah but they lack hammocks!
- Fomite 8y agoAnd yet a number of "First/Business Class Only" airlines have failed.
- zone411 8y agoBut most of them failed because a jump in oil prices in 2006-2014. We're below these levels now.