Originally Posted by
172skychicken
Jetblue is flying an A321 with 138 seats to London. 24 of those are the lie-flat mint product. They aren't going to be making any money in that configuration by trashing the yields. I think you are dramatically overestimating the CASM advantage over a 280 seat A339 or even a 240 seat 767-400. I just don't buy the A321 as a widebody killer over the Atlantic when the 757 also had a similar mission profile with similar theoretical CASM advantages over the widebodies of that generation.
This. I was actually shocked that they decided on LHR and not LGW or some other London airport. LHR is quite an expensive airport to operate in. They’re charging a landing fee of about £21 per passenger, and have announced plans to increase that in 2022. That’s just the landing fee. Then take into account jet bridge cost, ATC services, fuel, and all the other operational expenses and the cost stacks up very quickly.
The big guys are able to offset these costs by using big planes and spreading it out. AA’s 777-300ER as an example carries 304 passengers. 60 of those seats are premium lay flat first and business class. Then there’s the freight in the belly. (321 isn’t carrying any meaningful payload there).
All that payload and you can squeeze out a profit, hopefully. How JetBlue intends to make it work in LHR with an A321 is beyond me. Only time will tell I suppose.