Revenue per Available Seat Mile

[Kazari]

Revenue per Available Seat Mile (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Available_seat_miles) is a way of measuring how an airline is doing.

I think it would be valuable to see how much per passenger seat mile a flight is costing me and whether or not it's in the range I want to pay to operate that flight.

What prompted this was me wondering how the time equation of flying KPHX-PHNL compared to the much shorter KPHX-KSNA. When I took (pax X miles flown)/profit, I was able to get some gross numbers. What I found was that while the former flight grossed more, on a pure profit-per-passenger-mile-flown basis, the latter was the more profitable flight. This is probably more relevant on flights without competition.

What do you think? Is there a better way to measure the cost of a flight?

[Powi]

Profit per passenger flight hour (including turnaounds)?

[Sami]

I am planning to improve the financial system in the future.. which includes adding those too.

[Kazari]

That's super, Sami. I look forward to seeing it.

This is partly an academic question, though.

Is it measured by actual seat miles or is it measured by the potential seat miles and then load factor is taken into account?