boilerpilot

Who's South West? Never heard of that airline. Are they in an alliance with Youknighted?

Anyway, jokes aside, it's a bad comparison (no offense intended). Just like you can't look at one factor (i.e. load factor) and automatically label it as unsatisfactory, you can't do the same and claim the opposite. As eerily similar the route structures are, CASM, RASM, LF, crews per aircraft, etc etc etc etc are completely incomparable. Not to mention the fact that it can't even be boiled down to the 150 pax= two pilots + 3 FAs as opposed to 6 pilots (I know you made very similar points TD as I have, which were quite good and correct, I'm using this as an out of context example. Sorry!). As I mentioned above, even for that simplified comparison, you have to take into account the actual efficiency of the aircraft, crews per airplane, salaries for FAs and Pilots alike, salaries for ground handling and landing fees, expenses for amenities (Ha! They still exist?!) on board, MX cost, etc etc etc. Oh, and of course you have to compare markets. Most of the markets that XJet is serving are either operated by other RJs or by LCCs. That means, unfortunately, that XJet has almost zero control over pricing. Because their income per seat is going to be generally fixed due to the type of market they are competing in, it becomes that much more important to look at the costs rather than straight variables like load factor.