Originally Posted by
tpersuit
The only way for a 50-seater to die is if someone invents a 70-seater that burns the same gas or less. Otherwise as costs rise, passenger traffic will drop, causing larger airplanes to go away.
People have no sense with the economics of this. Some how a larger airplane that BURNS MORE GAS per hour is better on a route that has to charge more expensive tickets and less people can fly on it. Make sense?
I wouldn't say it has to do with how much more gas an aircraft burns, per se, but rather what is the overall cost per seat mile (CASM) of that particular aircraft. While, yes, an MD-80 would burn more gas on, say, JFK-BOS than a CRJ, they also carry 2-3 times as many people, and the extra fuel burn can be mitigated by extra pax/cargo revenue, resulting in a lower CASM for the MD-80 vs the CRJ.
Fuel is one variable in the formula. Additional variables are lease rates, crew costs, mx costs, type of inflight service, just to name a few.