10's vs 744

[Ansett Australia]

Hopefully just some advice if anyone can help....

I had intended to replace my older DC-10-40's with 747-400's as all the routes with the 10's had sufficient demand. However, after terminating my 10 lease and the using brand new 744's on the same routes, I started to loose money. The 10's were making over $1m profit per week and the 744 were loosing almost as much.

I decided to order another DC-10 as my new 744 was going in for maintenence, within the first week, it had made me a clear million again, using the same routes.

Should I ditch my 744's and stick with the 10's ....... it doesn't make sense to me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

[Sami]

Seems to me that all of the routes are still flying and creating revenue nicely. However I believe you did not take into account that probably the lease price of DC-10 was much lower than of the B747? But on the other hand B747 has lower maintenance costs, depending on the age of course, and 747 uses also more fuel.

[Ansett Australia]

Thanks Sami I had realised that the 747 would be a higher lease cost.....I am using them on some domestic routes now that were already seemingly well catered but they are making good money on them anyways.

Have created a new International route for one altogether so I will see how that goes.

[swiftus27]

Don't get used to flying 747s or really any widebody (think 2 aisle aircraft) on domestic flights.  An airline flying 3 752s against you will be more successful. 

[Curse]

It is of course possible and a good move to use widebody aircraft on domestic routes.

If you have routes that are not or not likely flown by other airlines, for example when you are the only airline out of Tokyo Haneda, Atlanta, Taipei, Beijing or other crowded airports with lots of demand on short routes, it's a smart move to use your biggest available aircraft model.

While the 747 domestic variants (as well as the normal variants) have a very high turn-around time, they are a bit more tricky than for example A300 or A330.

If you would use 757, even the smaller -200 variant, smaller aircraft like A320, 717 or CRJ1000 still can move you out.


Always remember: A big aircraft like 747-400D needs only one round of staff to transport 1800 pax per day (3x 600), while you need 4,5 aircraft with 100 seats to transport the same amount of pax - that means 4,5x more staff, 4,5x more slots, 4,5 more maintenace. That makes the biggest possible aircraft for your airport/routes in theory always to the favorite one to use.