It’s late in the week, so this is not the best time to publish some neat data. But here goes, for those of you still at work.
Combining data from Form 41 (P5.2) and T-2 allows us to run some interesting analyses. The table below shows the average flying operation costs per flight hour and divided by the number of seats to equalize this as much as possible for the single-aisle aircraft in use among US airlines. The rows are in order from the lowest cost to the highest.
In case you noticed the A220-100 is missing – the 1Q19 number for that aircraft was $28.97. By comparison with the other aircraft listed this is much higher. But its early days and that program is still get shaken loose. So it was excluded for now. Notice the high numbers for the 737-700 and A319 – key targets for the A220-300.
However, the good news here is for Boeing (they could use some of that). The MAX9 has the lowest cost per hour/seat. Its competitor, the A321neo entered the market last year and was settling in, so 2018 isn’t a fair comparison. But for 1Q19 the MAX9 appears to be at over 18% lower cost. That is a big difference. The MAX8 in 1Q19 was over 19% lower cost than the A320neo.
The next chart lists the aircraft is descending order by fuel costs/hour/seat. The purple is fuel costs and the green total flying costs – the numbers are for 1Q19 only.
As the chart illustrates it is useful to see how fuel impacts total costs. Whereas in terms of total costs an aircraft may look uncompetitive, in terms of fuel burn we see it quite differently – i.e. A321neo (A21N). The chart also shows the tremendous difference in technology between generations of aircraft. (Once again, please ignore the A220-100 for now) The MAX9 is over 50% more fuel efficient on a per seat/hour basis than the MD-80.
Subscribers can manipulate our model to dive into the data in more detail.