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by Retric 1408 days ago
Meanwhile a one way ticket cost US$975 in 1977 or inflation adjusted about 4,700$ today. Which increased faster than inflation so by mid 90’s your talking around 6,000$ which is something like 12,000$ today.

Thus fuel while expensive wasn’t a deal killer over most of it’s history as long as they could keep most seats filled.

1 comments

The "as long as they could keep most seats filled" was a deal killer though.

There was enough demand for one return flight a day carrying a small proportion of the overall passengers on the immensely-popular with wealthy people JFK-LHR and JFK-CDG routes. That wasn't enough to utilise the 14 production aircraft properly, never mind enough demand for it to have been viable as an airframe programme ...

They both also used it for private charters which was apparently quite a profitable business. Anyway, the exclusivity was presumably more profitable than simply maximizing occupancy.

That said, boom is building a significantly smaller aircraft which should again open up more possible routes.