The issue is that a 747 is too big to fly from, say, London to St Louis profitably.
This is a single aisle, small aircraft. It is a big unlock for more point to point, small market to big market flights (and even small market to small market flights).
Flights like NY-FLR without having to transit somewhere in the EU will become an option, at least over the summer, might become an option (if FLR even has customs/immigration).
Are labor costs a significant percentage of the cost to run a route? A smaller airplane with less passengers will need less flight attendants but I'm guessing it'll need nearly the same number of pilots, co-pilots, and relief pilots. Given the ever-worsening pilot shortage, simple staff availability might be an issue regardless of labor costs.
the big cost reduction is engines. a jet engine is the most expensive part of a plane, so halving the number of engines dramatically reduces the plane cost and maintenance cost.
"767-300ER consumes 1,600 gallons of fuel for each hour in flight" according to one link, to give you some back-of-envelope math.
Looks like in the US, Jet A costs roughly $4/gal (I'm sure airlines pay less, due to volume and such) but that means the plane is burning $6500/hr in fuel.
Very rough guesses on labor: figure the two pilots are making $100k/year, that's $100-200/hour just for them. Cabin crew I'd guess are 50k/year, google says 7 of them, so that's $350-700/hour there (figures are doubled because I seem to recall the true cost of an employee is usually twice their salary?)
So very very roughly, fuel costs are 10x labor costs
> Very rough guesses on labor: figure the two pilots are making $100k/year
Fuel costs still outweigh labour, but a captain on a 767 makes more than double that (~$220,000-$250,000 USD or thereabouts). A first officer would be looking at $120,000ish, I think?
I used the average airline pilot salary according to glassdoor. I doubled all the labor costs to account for non-wage expenses.
I'm sorry that wasn't good enough for you in a comment where I repeatedly qualified things as "back of the envelope" and "very rough" and so on, and made it clear I picked one particular model out of the blue.
...and the difference between fuel and labor was an order of magnitude, which more than answered the parent commenter.
Also, pilot seniority / pay varies with the route and schedule, not airplane model.
> I'm sorry that wasn't good enough for you in a comment where I repeatedly qualified things as "back of the envelope" and "very rough" and so on, and made it clear I picked one particular model out of the blue.
Dude, I was just adding information for the unaware reading this thread, you can unnail yourself from that cross. It wasn’t an attack.
> Also, pilot seniority / pay varies with the route and schedule, not airplane model.
It varies by seniority and model they’re checked out on. Model they are qualified on determines the routes they can bid on - because you recertify every 6 months in simulator on your model, it’s not really possible to maintain a bunch of different active certifications and fly routes with different models routinely, so your model determines your pay. Source: close family member has been a commercial airline pilot for decades and has been actively involved in union negotiations.
Is this a recent development where people take a reply to by-default be an argument rather than sometimes just adding to discussion? I've seen it a few times on HN in the last year.
Florentine here.
We already have a JFK-PSA with Delta in the summer season operated with A330.
FLR has a very short runway, so very few aircraft are allowed to landing there. A320neo is one of them, so I suppose also A321.
This is a single aisle, small aircraft. It is a big unlock for more point to point, small market to big market flights (and even small market to small market flights).
Flights like NY-FLR without having to transit somewhere in the EU will become an option, at least over the summer, might become an option (if FLR even has customs/immigration).