Estimating Flight Ops costs for selected EU airlines

The US DoT datasets are truly a cornucopia of information.  We are fortunate to have such granular data – despite some of the issues in working with it. In conversations with people across the industry, we consistently remark that this data can be used as benchmarks. Today we’d like to illustrate how this works using a few EU airlines and focusing on two popular aircraft,  the A320ceo and the 737-800.

The chart illustrates two metrics, fuel cost per seat hour and overall flight ops costs per seat hour.   We are using averages from 2015 through 1H21 from the US DoT as the benchmark and then applying that to aircraft seats at the airlines shown.  Depending on if your ox is getting gored, you either dislike this approach or you like it. Absent granular operational information from European airlines at this level, we are exercising some creative license.