First Class fares

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Quantum
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First Class fares

Post by Quantum » Fri Jun 23, 2006 9:36 am

Hi,

Not sure if this has been mentioned before or not but I'll add it anyway.

Why not have a two tier price for tickets. I've just looked at real life ticket prices for British airways EGLL-KFJK. Flexible economy is 431 sterling, flexible first class is 3336 sterling which is a factor of @7.75 over the economy fare. If we were to adopt a two tier price structure we would need to reconfigue the seating on the aircraft database for those aircraft which operate with a first class compartment, and also come up with a reasonable fare 'factor'. All calculated % load factors would apply to all seat classes.

The bonus of this is, it would allow operation of executive aircraft as all seats would in effect be first class with no economy seating. It would also allow CBFS to operate other pioneering aircraft (e.g. Avro Lancastrian) which in their day had few seats but all/most air travel was considered a luxury. Concorde would also become viable for those that wish to have a go with her.

I'm sure this is a feasable suggestion.

Rgds

John

BigQ

Post by BigQ » Fri Jun 23, 2006 3:49 pm

Yes, it has been proposed a while ago, although i don't remember what the arguement was...

I think it'd be pretty cool to have that system because we use the 2-class seat configuration on all airplanes, right?

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Post by Quantum » Fri Jun 23, 2006 4:39 pm

BigQ wrote:I think it'd be pretty cool to have that system because we use the 2-class seat configuration on all airplanes, right?

Yes, but I think you'd have to look carefully at each aircraft though once a fare factor for first class had been worked out and adjust seating accordingly. A balance would have to be found to allow the current uneconimically viable aircraft to operate successsfully within FlyNET but not let the already economic aircraft reap increased benefits. A little bit extra perhaps to allow for the reduced passenger stats but not too much.

Rgds

John

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Post by joefremont » Fri Jun 23, 2006 5:33 pm

First Class Seats.

I some half baked ideas on the subject, although I had not completely worked out all the details.

We redefine the number of passengers in the aircraft type database to be the maximum number an aircraft could carry.
The airlines could configure each plane by paying a per seat fee and swap two standard seats for one first class seat or back again.
Tickets for first class seats would be 4x the standard seat.

There would be an additional formula for determining what percentage of the total seats on the plane could be sold as first class seats, the additional factors could include.

- Aircraft speed, faster aircraft would sell more than slower aircraft determined by average cruise speed.
- Longer routes would sell more than short routes.

Some planes like the Concord and executive jets could be designated as first class only.
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Post by Quantum » Fri Jun 23, 2006 7:57 pm

Hi Joe,

It needs to be kept simple. The reason for suggesting implementation is to enable aircraft that are economically unable to operate in the current FlyNET fare structure to become an economic proposition.

One solution is to look at the most uneconomic aircraft to operate and work out a 'first class' fare factor to make it viable. If a particular aircraft had, say 6 seats and needed 36 passengers to make it economic to run, then we would need a first class fare factor of 6 and the aircraft was declared an 'all first class' aircraft. If an airline wished to offer a first class service on say a B747 or A340 then they could swap 6 economy seats for 1 first class. The Boeings and Airbus' are already very profitable and don't really need to have further enhanced profits. The problem with this is that another aircraft may come along and may be more uneconomical to run and everything would have to be adjusted again.

Another alternative is to have different 'standard' fare categories with a factor of 1 to 8 as an example. Then you could designate an aircraft to a fare category. Most would operate in 'category 1'. Other aircraft e.g. the execs, Concorde and other designated aircraft could be in a different category to make them profitable. It would be nice for someone to be able to set up an executive charter operation with say Citation, Lear Jet or HS125 business jets and be able to operate them profitably. It would take some experimenting to get the aircraft in the right category but you could do some calculations over a couple of designated routes to work out the maths and make an educated categorisation. Re-categorising could be applied for if operators were struggling with type.

My aim is to enable a more diverse operation of different aircraft for the enjoyment of more simmers. The Avro Lancastrian carried about 8 passengers over long distances. It would need a hefty first class fare factor to make it viable or it goes into a high category to get maximum fare per passenger.


Rgds

John

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Post by joefremont » Fri Jun 23, 2006 8:40 pm

John,

Yes, I see your point. My idea was that aircraft could be configured to the routes they are used on. An aircraft used on a short haul route would might have a hard time selling first class seats while that same aircraft used on an international flight would sell more of them. The aircraft itself could be reconfigured by the airline without having to create a new 'type' in the database. But then the higher price per seat / fewer seats might cancel each other out.

Another motivator in my idea was to figure out a way to reward faster aircraft as I am sure on the same route, most passengers would pay extra to get there on a faster jet rather than a slow prop liner, and make really fast jets like the concord profitable.

Your fare category idea could be the solution. Not sure if you would need more than two or three categories depending on if the seats are standard, all business class or all first class.
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Post by Quantum » Wed Jun 28, 2006 3:18 pm

Hi Joe,

I was trying to keep things as simple as possible. I think the load factor that is calculated currently and applied to the whole of the aircraft capacity should still be the same but it is just applied to the different seating classes. So currently if you have a load factor of say 95%, then 95% of economy class is filled and 95% of first class is filled. We must assume this to keep the coding simple. Regarding aircraft and the database, each aircraft could be 'tuned' to the individual VA with approval from FlyNET. Any approvals would have to be seen to be 'fair play'. My suggestion is not really aimed at aircraft that are currently very profitable on the database already, it is aimed at those aircraft that are marginally economic or completely uneconomic. As previously mentioned, the likes of the small business jets, Concorde and quite a few of the 'classics'. By doing this it just enables those pilots, that want to operate a fleet of Citation X's, Learjets or Concordes etc, the means to operate them viably in FlyNET.

Rgds

John

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