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Re:The 20-Hour Flight Is Coming, and It May Have a Gym and B... by fyfy18 on Thursday August 30, 2018 @05:29PM (#17880951)
A few years ago I was listening to an interview with (I believe) Tim Clark, president of Emirates, and he said that just by filling up business class - which happens most of the time - alone, their A380 flights from DXB to LHR are turning a profit. So the other 400 passengers in economy are a bonus.
Re:The 20-Hour Flight Is Coming, and It May Have a Gym and B... by sseveran on Thursday August 30, 2018 @06:01PM (#17881199)
Wendover did a great video on just this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc

Re:The 20-Hour Flight Is Coming, and It May Have a Gym and B... by GFischer on Thursday August 30, 2018 @08:32PM (#17882027)
Yes, business class is basically what pays for the trip.

It's the business travelers that are subsidizing the economy ones, not the other way round.

So it doesn't make sense to make economy more comfortable, actually the opposite.

Re:The 20-Hour Flight Is Coming, and It May Have a Gym and B... by awucs on Thursday August 30, 2018 @09:20PM (#17882223)
Usually one tends to put it the other way, that economy pays for the trip and business class delivers the profit. Which makes sense because that is how e.g. a low cost carrier operates. While business class only flights are almost non-existent even though that in theory would make more money.
Re:The 20-Hour Flight Is Coming, and It May Have a Gym and B... by GFischer on Friday August 31, 2018 @06:44AM (#17884441)
I think they're non-existant because there's not enough demand.

The travel group I work for caters for corporations and luxury travelers, and they'd stop selling economy in a heartbeat if they could (it's a money-loser for the company, as there's little to no commissions on them)

Re:The 20-Hour Flight Is Coming, and It May Have a Gym and B... by awucs on Friday August 31, 2018 @09:05AM (#17885191)
I don't think it has to do with demand as such. It is just hard to allocate resources with business class only flights. With a traditional layout you can oversell economy and upgrade or push people to the next flight. If you are running all your business class capacity on a few flights you can't do that. Nor can you have the same amount of routes. I guess you can say that is because of demand, but it is more because of the model. "Tourist business" doesn't really exist, unless maybe we count Norwegian.

That said, I would love to see an all business Airbus A321neoLR with Thompson Vantage Solo seats.

Re:The 20-Hour Flight Is Coming, and It May Have a Gym and B... by sandworm101 on Thursday August 30, 2018 @06:25PM (#17881337)
But that doesnt mean they arent paying more per foot. Profitability and the ratio between classes are different concepts.