Do airlines make money from 1c flights?

xha1r

Hello,

Other than the 1c and recurring customers, do airlines make any profit from offering these prices. I mean do they get a cut of airport taxes or is it just that 1c?

Regards,
JB.

BreadBoard

I dough it, although that's not why they have those deals. I'd say they do it for the advertising and the customers that these cheap deals bring?

Skyuser

Of course they make money in the long run. Just look at Ryanair.

GerardKeating

xha1r wrote:

Hello,

Other than the 1c and recurring customers, do airlines make any profit from offering these prices. I mean do they get a cut of airport taxes or is it just that 1c?

Regards,
JB.

Yeah, esp if the passenger buys a cup of coffee, which can be more expensive than the flight ticket.

Also from the no-shows, they get to keep the airport taxes.

But soon, there will be legislation to make the include taxes in the fair.

Lambsbread

The theory behind it is that they can either make the 1c or have empty seats. It doesn't cost anything to have the extra one passenger.

Salmon

I suppose only the first few seats are 1c. If you were to look at it from the other perspective and consider what the last few passengers on the plane need to pay! For a flight to the UK which was only booked 1 day in advance you could be talking €150-€200. So overall they always win! Plus it is useful for advertising purposes to sell off these cheap flights. I cant remember them ever advertising the prices the last 30 or so passengers have to pay!!!

FlutterinBantam

Airlines of course do not make money on 1c flights.

Its whats called a loss leader.They have it well worked that overall, the route or flight is profitable. That is how they stay in business and the ones who cannot react quickly enough go out of business.

slave1

don't forget the charges on top of the taxes, €10 with RyanAir to cover me using a credit card on a return flight for 2

phantom_lord

They sell these tickets on flights that are already mostly filled and the're assured a profit on. Alot of the seats are ones they were gonna have empty anyway, so it's better to fill it than leave it empty. Especially when they've a chance to make money from the extras, and pick up the taxes on no shows.

You'll never see a flight where every seat has been sold for 1c.

Sleepy

As other's have said, they make the 1c instead of 0c if the seat was empty, they get the credit card handling fee, the luggage fee if you don't travel with only carry-on (pretty much impossible for a bloke unless you leave your razor at home), the potential in-flight sales and the cost savings of being able to do their advertising in-house instead of hiring an expensive ad-agency as the prices themselves are low enough to attract attention in a print/radio/television ad and the word of mouth advertising of people bragging about how cheaply they flew to destination X for €10 all in return etc.

jdivision

They make the money from the credit card booking fee and from some of the levies: eg, the wheelchair levy with Ryanair must be paid by every customer but how many flights is there ever anybody with a wheelchair on em.

dunkamania

Lambsbread wrote:

The theory behind it is that they can either make the 1c or have empty seats. It doesn't cost anything to have the extra one passenger.

This is not true,
the fuel cost of carrying an extra person plus baggage will defnitely exceed the 1c.Its an advertising gimmick.

Sponge Bob

Subject : Bag a Bargin - Flights from EUR1

tbh

Sponge Bob wrote:

Subject : Bag a Bargin - Flights from EUR1

sadly, sponge bob, they won't.

Sponge Bob

Not the best message to send out to over 1m email recipients worldwide .

Hi, we are worth defending from Micko because we can't spell. Mercy upon us.

parsi

Sleepy wrote:

As other's have said, they make the 1c instead of 0c if the seat was empty, they get the credit card handling fee, the luggage fee if you don't travel with only carry-on (pretty much impossible for a bloke unless you leave your razor at home),

Are yo using a cut-throat ? I use a disposable and it goes through no problem (last week it went through Cork, Paris, Lux and Schiphol) and its still sharp

Gurgle

xha1r wrote:

Other than the 1c and recurring customers, do airlines make any profit from offering these prices. I mean do they get a cut of airport taxes or is it just that 1c?

Has anyone, anywhere, ever actually got a flight for 1c?
Best I've ever managed was about €15 + taxes and charges so about €25 each way.

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

i regularly (i.e. every week) got a flight from Cardiff to Dublin with Ryanair for 1c + taxes. This was for about 6 months until they shut the route after cardiff airport put up their fees (lucky for cardiff airport, they got Aer Arann instead!).

You just have to book in advance and travel between tuesday and thursday.

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

in terms of how they make money

- an element of the card handling fees (but not all of it)
- in flight sales
- an element of the taxes
- no shows
- incentives to bring passengers to depressed regional areas from local governments
- high ticket prices around weekends and public holidays, and in summer

Also, a big area of profit for Ryanair is through their website. As you can see they now offer hotels, hostels, credit cards, car hire. These additional sales are actually making a good contribution towards Ryanair's annual profits.

Colonel Sanders

The thing to rememeber is only a few seats will be sold at 1c. The average Ryanair short haul fare is around 40-45 quid. Add in credit card fees, baggage charges and the 'charges' element of the 'taxes, fees and charges' and they make money on the averge passenger. Take an individual who paid 1c for the flight and they might make a loss on that particular seat but that is more than compensated from the person who books later and pays anything up to 200 quid for a flight.

The trick is book early and you will even get weekend flights for 1c.

Galileo

Firstly it costs a small amount of fuel for every extra passenger carried so any airline loses money if you purely examine the 1c fare.

tbh

hmmm....

I have a feeling you are trying to tell us something there but i can't.....quite.....figure.....

BuffyBot

So where would you hypothetically set it up?

Hypothetically, one would want to be quite careful as speaking hypothetically isn't much of a defense..

Galileo

Hypothetically, one would want to be quite careful as speaking hypothetically isn't much of a defense..

Indeed, but the truth would be.

However given that such a hypothetical company would probably abuse the legal system to get at critics I will edit the above.