| This is fascinating! A few comments have mentioned the cost to the airline for running the route - the author talks about revenue, not profit - but most, if not all the costs are calculated on time, not distance. Nearly everything in an aircraft has a maintenance window / shelf life measured in minutes / hours / days / months / years. The JFK - LON route could be 7 hours, or 5 hours depending on prevailing winds. That’s an extra 2 hours you have to pay the flight crew, run the engines, maybe even an extra meal for the passengers and so forth. Weather has an astounding affect on how much a given flight will cost, and probably traffic is the next one - hence why landing / gate spots at busy airports are so expensive. Crew are legally mandated to only work X hours in a given time frame (both active and standby), so if you’re held up in the air or on the ground, especially on a long haul flight - you might not be legally clear to make that flight! There’s a whole field of dispatch operations for aviation that handles this, and for the finance folks - the financial model for aviation is just subtly different enough to cause a few headaches if you’re not aware. |