Average fare paid to a US based airline is $150 according to Business Week (likely each way) up a bit from last year. Most airlines do confirm that more than 80% of their rev comes from less than 20% of their customer base. Another factor is how many folks wouldn't take the flight if they couldn't get the b2b fare. My 2 (1.2CAD) cents. Matthew Original Message: ----------------- From: Addison Schonland addison@schonland.com Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 15:14:25 -0700 To: AIRLINE@LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU Subject: back-to-back question I was just asked to estimate the size of the "problem" for the airlines in the US....here is my estimate. Based on 570m passengers...if 1% do this means =3D 5.7m people per year....using b2b only makes sense for FF....so that means at least 6 trips per year....assuming a full Y (anyone buy those anymore?) costs $1,200 but buying b2b saves at least 50%....so a person doing this would not pay $7,200 per year but $3,600....then doing the big math this would equate roughly to 6m people paying $3,600 less than they should - my estimate is that for every 1% that do this, the "problem" is valued at $20.5bn. I of course think much more than 1% do this. However the numbers are huge - any arguments with my logic or math? -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ .