Regular readers know that several times we have focused on airline flight operations on a per-minute basis. We have especially focused on costs per minute. You may recall that we previously estimated the US airline industry operated at $98 for flight ops/minute. The range for the industry (through 3Q21) is $141/min at Hawaiian to $74/min at Allegiant.
Following an interesting chat on LinkedIn, we noted the idea of a “per minute” focusing on ASMs. Our experiment took the concept and developed the following model to try to get to this idea. The idea here is to see if we can get another view of how US airlines are operating in terms of capacity (ASM) and the cost of those ASMs.
Selecting an airline changes the charts. The large chart lists ASM/minute and Flight Ops costs per minute. The KPI boxes below provide these two metrics, with the latest number listed. A red color suggests the trend is negative and green suggests an improvement. The third KPI is our estimate of the ASM cost per minute. The same green/red idea applies.Â
We’re keen to get your feedback on this idea.