Here's a Q - Analyse this........

[ASH]

Heard a business proposal that went something like the following. Tear it apart with numbers and see if it is even viable, and why it would, or would not work.

Aircraft : 2 B747-400
Proposed usage: JFK-MCO 4 round trips per day.
Ticket price: 105.00 Roundtrip Even last minute

Theory: Flights are ALWAYS booked solid into MCO, even overbooked at times. At a price like this would it attract the usual MCO clientel? The profit margin would be horribly thin, ( Even feasible?) Would people go for something like this? Is the market there for it? There are many, many different angles and considerations to this proposition. Go ahead and tear it up, would it work??

 

[tango uniform]

MCO is not always booked solid. Traffic is in fact highly seasonal. The hundereds of aircrew who live in the area could not get to work otherwise. (or visit our parents!)

I presume you are planning a max cap of 535 souls in a high-density all coach config. Seat pitch in this config is quite unpleasant for westerners.

This means 2140 pax per day, each way into JFK alone with only 4 flight times to chose from. That's a lot of O&D for any market.

The trend seems to be more frills in LCC, rather than less (a la JB, Song, SWA giving more than nuts). A sardine can that takes an hour to load and unload at each end and would barely allow for a single bev service.....yuck.

Arrival sequencing into NYC can burn quite a bit of fuel in a heavy. As a percentage from a 15 hour flight to Asia, it is not as onerous as a 150 minute flight to "America's Wang".

My favorite is an axiom form the late 70's--"The fastest way to make a million in the airline industry is with a fully loaded 74. The fastest way to lose a million is with a 74 that isn't full."

Take a lot of cash flow to get it up and established. With that kind of scratch, I could probably come up with a few better ideas with less risk and higher return. Now if you already had the planes......