Will Low-Cost, Long-Haul Flying Ever Work?
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There is an unfortunate graveyard of airlines going back decades. WOW Air, Air Primera, Norwegian Long Haul, Air Berlin, and PLAY Airlines all tried and failed to break into the long-haul market in a low-cost way. The airline business is notoriously expensive, difficult, and ruthless, but the long-haul, low-cost model is particularly brutal.
By its very nature, long-haul flying is expensive, the biggest factor usually being fuel. Exact numbers are hard to pin down, since airlines buy fuel in bulk and have well-negotiated contracts with providers to bring costs down.
Diving into the Costs
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According to Airlines for America, on June 25th, 2026, jet fuel costs $2.83/gallon in the United States. Let’s say we’re British Airways, looking to fly a 787-9 from New York to London. That requires roughly 20,000 gallons of gas to do, so you’re looking at a bill of almost $57,000. Again, this is just an estimate. BA got lucky today and has a full load of passengers, meaning all 216 seats are filled. That amounts to a fuel cost of $236 per seat. Based on seven days of economy tickets on British Airways from JFK-LHR I looked at in mid-October, the average cost for this flight is about $290. There are, of course add-ons like bags and seats that net the airline a little extra. For the sake of math, let’s say all passengers paid $320 for their seats in economy with all the add-ons, amounting to $40,640 for British Airways.
The cost of a premium economy ticket on this JFK-LHR flight is significantly higher, amounting to $1,100 per seat. This includes bags and seat selection, so across the 39 premium economy seats on the plane, this is $42,900 netted for BA.
The 42 people in business have all paid $2,500 for their tickets, earning BA an additional $105,000. For the fanciest seat, First Class, 8 passengers have paid $4,100, which gives BA $32,800. On this flight, British Airways has made $221,340. Now it’s time for them to pay up.
They’re spending $57,000 on fuel (total balance: $164,340). They have to pay 10 flight attendants and 2 pilots. It’s tremendously difficult to figure out how much crew are paid per flight since it varies depending on a ton of factors. I enlisted the help of Claude, which put the estimate around $9,000 in crew pay and per diem (total balance: $155,340). Another hard number to pin down is the catering cost, since what an airline pays is not public. I put together some very rough math and calculated BA is paying somewhere around $8,000 in food (total balance: $147,340).
Then come in all the fees. At JFK, there’s an AirTrain charge of $1.77 per 1,000 pounds of MTOW. That’s costing BA just under $1,000 (total balance: $146,340).
Even in the air, BA is going to have to cough up fees. As they cross the various ATC zones in the North Atlantic, they have to pay their way along. It’s not usually huge, about $250 per flight (total balance: 146,090)
When coming into Heathrow, there’s a lot more fees. Everything in Britain is obviously in Pounds, but I’ll be converting it to USD for cohesiveness.
The Heathrow price cap (meaning the total amount in fees they can charge) per passenger is $31.31, or $6,762 for our full 787-9 (total balance: $139,328). This doesn’t mean they will be charged the full $31.31, but it’s usually somewhere close to that. Breaking down the cap, there’s emissions charges (though operating a fuel-efficient plane like a Dreamliner helps), noise charges, runway usage fees, and different fees for peak vs. off peak times.
British Airways will pull into the gate with about $140,000 in profit on this flight. They still have to pay for gate space, but BA being the home carrier of London is helpful in that they have very well-negotiated contracts and discounts. JFK-LHR is the most profitable route in the world, heavily helped by its premium-heavy passenger loads who are willing to pay up for nicer seats.
But the scenario I’ve just laid out is an ideal flight on an ideal day. That’s not always the case. Most flights don’t go totally full. Sometimes Premium cabins sit mostly empty. BA still has to pay nearly the same amount, but their starting numbers are a lot poorer. Then consider longer routes, perhaps with lower load factors. Some of their US flights average sub-70% seats filled. The margins start to get a lot thinner, sometimes dipping into the red. This gets financially precarious when costs spike unexpectedly in ways the airline can’t control. At the peak of the Iran War, fuel cost $4.88 a gallon, meaning BA could have paid up to $100,000 just in gas.
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Low-cost, long-haul airlines can succeed under very specific conditions. When demand is strong and fuel costs are low, it is a doable thing. There are examples like French Bee, Scoot, and Zip Air that have found profitability. Personally, I think that an airline operating on this model that is going to succeed is going to be best with narrowbody aircraft. Costs are dramatically lower, and you need to sell less seats to maintain profitability. With the 737 MAX and A321XLR, this is more accessible than ever.
Someone to watch in this market is FlyAtlantic, a new long-haul, low-cost carrier planning operations from Belfast across the Atlantic starting in Spring of 2027. This may or may not happen on time - they originally planned a launch in Summer of 2024, and they have yet to secure planes (as of the latest reporting, they’re still deciding between 737 MAXs and A321LRs). But if they can get off the ground, a connecting network between Europe and North America via Belfast could work out.
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