On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 19:06:11 -0700, matt weber
wrote:



The decision was made to fly the Boeing 747-400 back to Auckland with
only the 13 crew and in-flight service director on board. An airline
spokesman said the cost of flying the aircraft home without passengers
would have been "up to $50,000".

Somebody's arithmetic is more than a bit suspect... Two ways of
looking at this, but for starters, it is a 6500 mile mission, so about
12 hours, and about 240,000 pouns of Jet A, or about 37,000 gallons,
at current rates that is about 33,000USD just for the fuel. That says
nothing about landing fees, maintenance, or anything else.

The other way is to look at NZ's ASM cost. It is about 11 US cents,
and that puts the price at about 280,000USD.

Either way, NO WAY IT CAN BE DONE FOR ONLY $50,000

Huh? The aircraft was going to fly the route anyway, so landing fees,
maintenance, etc. would have been paid anyway.

Operating empty of passengers (but not, I'd bet, cargo) means that it
would save some fuel, plus catering costs. But those costs would be
borne by the alternate flights (NZ1, QF26, etc.) so that's a wash.

The only additional costs that would be incurred would be the
compensation to the passengers and any incremental costs of having
other carriers like Qantas (or whoever) take their passengers.

I'm not seeing a problem with the $50K number...

Malc.