Flying is expensive.
Why is this?
Well most would say it’s because of the cost of fuel, but that’s not entirely true.
The Airbus a320neo can carry 6,400 gallons of fuel.
That’s the equivalent of 376 fully tanked Toyota Camry’s.
For every mile that the a320 flies, it burns 1.5 gallons of jet fuel.
That works out to a paltry .67 miles per gallon.
An a320 could barely fly from the Empire State Building to Grand Central Terminal on that
gallon of fuel.
To fly the 213 miles from New York to DC, that a320 needs 317 gallons of fuel.
With that amount, our Toyota Camry could drive from New York to LA 49 times.
But, we do have to consider that a Camry only seats five.
An a320 seats 154.
So, assuming that our plane is fully loaded, it now has a per person fuel efficiency of
104.7 miles per gallon.
That’s amazing!
According to the Bureau of Transport Statistics, airlines pay on average only $1.24 per gallon
of fuel.
So, flying from New York to DC, you personally only use $2.50 worth of fuel, so why do these
tickets cost upwards of $80!
Well, there’s so much more that goes into your ticket price than fuel.
Before we start, I’ll quickly mention that these are all rough estimates.
Many of these prices will vary widely through time and there are certainly ways that airlines
reduce these costs, but this will give you a general idea of what actually makes flying
so expensive.
The first thing we can add to our ticket price is crew costs.
A pilot makes on average around $79,000 a year which works out to about $44 per flight
hour.
We have two pilots so for our hour long flight from New York to DC so that’s $88 to the
pilots.
A fully loaded a320 requires four flight attendants who are each paid around $38 per flight hour
for a total of $152 bringing our crew costs up to $240.
So, with our 154 seats that works out to just about $1.5 per person in crew costs.
Alright, now we’re at $4 dollars.
Next, we gotta pay the airports.
New York’s John F Kennedy Airport charges $6.33 per thousand pounds of airplane taking
off, and our a320 weighs 172,000 pounds.
That means we have to give $1089 dollars to JFK or $7 per person.
Dulles airport doesn’t publish their landing fees, but we’ll assume it’s about the
same as JFK’s landing fees at $1005 for our now 170,000 pound airplane.
These fees generally include the cost of using gates, porters, and other airport resources,
and divide down to $13.5 per person.
Our total is now at $17.5.
Now we get to the fun part—taxes.
There’s a litany of different taxes and they all vary by country, so for the sake
of simplicity we’ll just cover the ones for the US.
The simplest tax is the Domestic Passenger Ticket Tax at 7.5% of the ticket price.
That money goes to the FAA.
If you land or take off a rural airport, which is defined as, “an airport with less than
100K enplanements during 2nd preceding calendar year, and either 1) is not located within
75 miles of another airport with 100K+ enplanements per year, 2) is receiving essential air service
subsides, or 3) is not connected by paved roads to another airport,” they also tack
on another 7.5%.
That, of course, doesn’t apply to either of our airports.
The FAA also charges $4 flat for any flight within the US, unless you go to Hawaii or
Alaska.
Then they charge $8.70.
The TSA then adds a $5.60 tax called the 9/11 security fee that goes to fund the heightened
security since 9/11.
Those are only just for domestic flights.
If we were flying from New York to Paris, we would also have to add on $17.70 for the
International Transportation Tax, $5.50 for the US customs user fee, $5.00 for the U.S.
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Fee, $7.00 for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Fee, and $14 for the French Civil Aviation Tax.
So with all the taxes and fees that apply for this short flight, we’re now at $33
total.
Now, lets remember that airplanes are expensive.
Our a320 costs 107 million dollars.
The service life for airplanes is not actually determined by flying time, it’s determined
by something called flight cycles, which is basically a fancy word for one flight.
It doesn’t really matter how long an airplane flies in its service life, what matters is
how many times it’s pressurized.
This is because every time it’s pressurized, micro cracks develop around the rivets that
connect the the metal plates that make up a fuselage.
No matter if a plane goes on a 30 minute flight or a 9 hour flight, the wear and tear to the
plane will be the same.
This is why large long-haul airplanes are often older.
They might only go through one flight cycle per day while small regional jets could go
through eight or ten.
So, back to our a320.
Our plane is actually a pretty durable aircraft.
It can fly up to 60,000 cycles.
So if we divide the total price of our plane by the maximum number of flight cycles, we
get that $1783 per flight must be devoted towards paying off the initial price of the
airplane.
Per person, that works out to $11.5 dollars.
We’re now at $44.5 dollars.
To keep this plane safe, airlines have to also perform regular maintenance.
For our hour long flight, an airline has to do maintenance that will cost $646 in labor,
$276 in parts, $603 in inspections and component overhauls, and another $596 in engine restoration.
That’s $2121 total or $14 per person.
We’re up to $58.5 dollars.
We also have to consider the non-flying part of flying.
Overseeing any flight is an airline which is a business that has costs in and of itself.
They need to pay administrators, executives, software engineers, marketers, consultants,
customer service personal, public relations agents, janitors, along with rent, benefits,
travel costs, utilities, and more.
It’s hard to put an exact number on how much per person this works out to, but we’ll
make a conservative estimate of $10.
We’re up to $68.5.
Alright, insurance.
An airline will pay about $106,500 per year for insurance for an a320 and assuming our
plane spends eight hours per day in the air, $36 of this insurance is for this hour long
flight, or about 25 cents per person.
So, our very rough grand total is $68.75.
We’ll round this up to $70 since there are various small things I didn’t cover such
as hotel costs for crew members, plane storage, apu rental, liability insurance, etc.
That means that $10 of our plane ticket is profit, but keep in mind that all my estimates
were on the conservative end and it’s all assuming a fully loaded airplane.
In the end, not a ton of the money actually goes to the airline.
Back to my first line: “flying is expensive.”
Well, it really isn’t and it’s getting cheaper.
To fly in the magic metal bird across the country from New York to L.A. in six hours
costs around $340 roundtrip.
To drive in our very fuel efficient Toyota Camry across the country in forty hours costs
$340 just in fuel then an additional $300 in estimated maintenance and depreciation
costs.
In the past 30 years, the average inflation adjusted airfare has dropped by 50% and it’s
still dropping.
In 1974, it was actually illegal for airlines to offer a flight between New York and LA
for less than $1442 inflation adjusted dollars and now you can sometimes find these flights
for less than $200 round trip.
One of the reasons for this drop in prices is the rise of efficient airplanes.
Certain innovations such as composite construction, better aerodynamics, more efficient engines,
and, perhaps most notably, winglets have driven down the cost of flying.
Here’s the one and only “Real Engineering” to explain winglets.
As you said, the airline industry is constantly finding ways to drive down their fuel consumption.
In the early 70's, fuel prices rocketed, and engineers were forced to find ways to make
their planes more efficient.
One way they found was with winglets, which are those little curly bits at the end of
the wing.
Let's have a quick look at how they work.
Winglets were introduced to decrease induced drag, which occurs when high-pressure air
below the wing begins to bleed over the edge into the low-pressure air above.
This flow creates vortices off the tips of the wings that creates drag and reduces lift
which reduces the fuel economy of the plane.
Winglets act to reduce these vortices by reducing the airflow over the edge of the wing.
For a full explanation and a look at the history behind winglets, head over to my channel and
watch my new video which features a special guest appearance from Wendover Productions.
Thank’s Real Engineering!
Be sure to go check out and subscribe to Real Engineering’s channel.
If you like this channel, I guarantee you will enjoy his.
I’ll leave you with the real reason specific airfares are expensive, but also a reason
why they’re getting cheaper—competition, or lack there of.
The airline industry is one with very little competition.
Airfares from New York to LA are cheap because there’s a lot of demand and there’s a
relatively high amount of competition.
Five different airlines fly direct from New York to LA, two of which are budget airlines.
People don’t care that much which airline they fly, they care about the price, so airlines
will try to match the price of the budget airlines.
Compare this to a route like Denver to Gunnison Country airport.
Largely because only United makes this flight, you will often pay more than $500 for this
130 mile flight.
So, that’s why your plane tickets cost so much.
Next time you book your travel, you’ll know why you’re paying so much and also how little
of that actually goes to airlines.
Thank you for watching.
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Next week I’ll be back to my normal series—That Wikipedia List.