Greetings MrMarky,
Yield is not a fixed constant. It is determined by taking the average segment fare and dividing it by stage length. But yield is misleading. It tends to be much higher on short haul due to shorter stage lengths. But it is going to depend largely on the average segment fare being paid for everyone onboard. Yield is not an indicator of whether a flight is full or empty. It merely represent the average amount being paid by1 passenger to travel 1 mile.
RASM isn't that simplistic to say that given a constant number of passengers, RASM will be higher on a smaller aircraft. Sometimes that is indeed the case. But think about something like a 3-class widebody. If you're able to get a decent amount of passengers paying business and first class fares, your RASM could go up. But of course, chances are flying 100 passengers on a 3-class widebody will lose money whereas flying 100 passengers on an A320 will make money, all things being equal. Not sure if you remember, but up until a couple of years ago, UA was flight B744's between JFK-NRT that were configured with 36 F/123C/142Y seats. The revenue from the business class cabin paid for the entire flight. Unfortunately those days are gone. But I'm sure you can understand the illustration.
CASM is tough to calculate simply because there are so many things that go into it, such as: flight officer and flight attendant salaries, maintenance expenses and fees, aircraft servicing fees, food fees, fuel, insurance, aircraft ownership, facilities, landing fees, distribution costs, etc. Fully allocated costs contain all those items and more. So it's a tougher calculation than yield and unit revenue.
CMI stands for competitor market initiative I believe. It's a pricing term. Think of it as a quasi tap on the shoulder by carrier A to carrier B letting them know they're not happy with the fares carrier B filed in some of carrier A's markets. It's a pricing game and it gets played every day.
ATPCO stands for Airline Tariff Publishing Corporation. It's the clearinghouse for all airline fare activity. When airlines file new fares and fare basis codes, they do it to ATPCO. Those changes than get loaded into a tape that gets released to all airlines 3 times each day. So airline pricers always scrutinize these tapes when they're loaded to see what the other airlines have done with their fares.
Basically, as KCflyer and TomBascom point out correctly, the current fare structure is ridiculously flawed. Too many fares at grossly different ends of the dollar spectrum. Too many restrictions, etc., etc. I wasn't arguing over the need for change, I was merely trying to point out that it's not that easy, especially in this environment. I think fare rationalization will happen. It has to. Airlines simply cannot support this current structure and turn things around. But steps are going to be taken slowly. Testing is taking place each day in many markets. You just don't always hear about it in the press. But things have to change and they will. High-end fares and low-end fares do need to be rationalized.
As for your question about why high-cost BA and LH are making money on the trans-Atlantic and UA isn't, I can't completely answer that question because I don't have access to BA and LH numbers. But I know the numbers I see each month at UA. And they are downright ugly. High operating costs and low fares make for a bad combination. That's why I've always been amazed at how the large majors operated under the assumption that the business traveler would forever subsidize their costs of operation. Bethune is right. This industry at times is run by stupid people.
Good talking to you again MrMarky. Your boy Gore gonna run again?
02 AM KCFlyer wrote: 
