If I told you that I use Excel to crunch data in pivot tables and create interesting tables and charts, you would not bat an eyelid*.

But if I told you that my articles were written by AI you would be right to cancel your subscription.

Up until recently Airline Revenue Economics was 100% written by humans and AI free. Sticking with that means losing opportunities to use AI in interesting and valuable ways. I am now saying that Airline Revenue Economics is written and researched by humans, but finessed with AI.

Excel and other more sophisticated analytics platforms process most airline data quickly and efficiently. You would not expect me to go line-by-line through a schedule and note my observations. Large Language Models (LLM) can be used in the same way to analyse high volumes of text.

I recently used Perplexity to analyse 1,800 reviews from airlinequality.com. I took the last 300 reviews for six large European flag carriers and plugged them into the model.

The airlines were IAG members British Airways and Iberia, Air France and KLM, and Lufthansa and Swiss who are both part of Greater Lufty.

After reading the article I would love it if you could please write back to me with your thoughts on this type of analysis. Do you agree with Perplexity’s assessment? Do you have ideas about how we can use LLMs to do this analysis better? Please write and let me know.

So what did Perplexity find? Read on…

* Excel enthusiasts might even ask my favourite keyboard shortcuts. In case you are wondering, it is CMB-OPT-V+T to paste format on my Mac.

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A few words of caution

Many of us have hundreds or thousands of hours (or more!) hacking away at Excel. We understand how to spot errors, sanity check and audit our models.

LLMs are new tech for me and I am still learning how to handle them. So the results are what they are and should be treated cautiously with that in mind.

The sample itself may be biased. It is not clear whether or not the site owner publishes all comments received. Some flyers may be more likely to leave a report when the airline experience is unrepresentatively good or bad.

There are also issues with the dates of the reviews. I collected the information on 26-May-2026 and decided to choose the same number of reviews (300) for each airline because that gives a fair chance for customers to be heard.

But the consequence of this decision is that not all the reviews start at the same time. BA goes back to Jan-2024. KLM and Lufty reviews data back to 2023. Some Air France and Swiss reviews are from 2022.

Iberia is the only airline whose 300 reviews pre-date COVID, heading back to Aug-2019.

With all that in mind though, I think the results look plausible, reasonable and insightful.

What I asked Perplexity’s LLM

I first asked Perplexity to review the titles of all 1,800 reviews, which I put into a CSV file next to the airline’s code and uploaded to the LLM. I told Perplexity what the airline codes meant.

I also asked it to spend as much time as necessary to analyse and produce accurate and complete results, rather than something done quickly.

My specific questions were:

1. Please review all the titles and provide a table summarising what they say about each of the airlines

2. Please distinguish issues addressed by many reviews and issues addressed by not many reviews

3. Can we identify areas where each airline seems to be doing well and not well, according to these reviews? If so, please summarise them.

After Perplexity analysed the titles I loaded up the full reviews with two more questions:

1. Please conduct the same analysis and produce a table with the same structure as before

2. Please highlight if anything has changed

3. Please also highlight what we learn from the reviews that we did not get in the titles.

Analysis of the review titles

Here is what the LLM produced:

· “All six airlines attract many complaints about disrupted operations and weak customer service, while strengths are mainly crew quality, punctual flights, and a handful of good onboard experiences”

· “The most common negative themes are baggage loss or delay, cancellations or delays, poor compensation handling, and frustration with refunds or complaint handling”

· “Positive comments cluster around cabin crew friendliness, a smooth short-haul flight, or a surprisingly good onboard product.”

· “Many reviews issues tend to be structural and repeated: baggage, irregular operations, refunds/compensation, and service responsiveness”

· “Few reviews issues are more product-specific, such as seat pitch, lounge access, or a particular meal”.

I thought that these results were not surprising. My personal experience with airline crews has always been positive. It is easy to imagine passengers being upset and lashing out by posting bad reviews when things going wrong.

The model’s assessment of relative strengths & weaknesses was as follows:

· “Air France and SWISS receive the most frequent crew praise, with titles repeatedly using words like professional, excellent, friendly, and outstanding”

· “BA also gets pockets of praise for crew and individual good flights, but those positives sit alongside a larger volume of complaints about the airline as a system”

· “Iberia and KLM have some good-flight and good-value comments, yet the titles suggest those positives are often outweighed by baggage and service problems”

· “The most persistent weakness across all six airlines is baggage handling, but the title set suggests it is especially prominent for Iberia, Lufthansa, Air France, and KLM”

· “BA stands out for complaints about its service culture, value, and disruption handling”

· “Lufthansa stands out for operational unreliability and poor customer recovery”

· “KLM attracts unusually harsh language about customer service and compensation”

· “Swiss is notable for a sense of disappointment that the product no longer matches its premium image”.

I was surprised by some of these conclusions. In my experience BA crew on the plane and staff on the ground are always great. I am not quite sure what Perplexity means when it describes “complaints about the airline as a system” or the “service culture”.

The Lufthansa comments about poor customer recovery and a note about Swiss not being what it used to be sound plausible.

The LLM’s conclusions were:

· “Air France and SWISS have stronger onboard and crew reputations but still serious operational weaknesses”

· “BA, Iberia, Lufthansa, and KLM show deeper dissatisfaction with the wider service system and disruption handling”

· “The main doing well area for most carriers is crew quality and occasional smooth journeys”

· “The main not doing well area is how they behave when something goes wrong”.

An ability to put things right when they have gone wrong has for more than 15 years been the one thing that I have considered to be the most important service an airline can offer. It is not a surprise to see this come out of the customer reviews.

Here is the table that Perplexity produced:

Analysis of the core review text

Here are the LLM’s opening remarks:

· “The picture is much richer than in the titles: the same core complaints recur, but now we can see the operational details, emotional tone, and concrete failure points behind them”

· “Across all six airlines, the main problems remain disruption handling, baggage, refunds/compensation, and customer support, while the main strengths are still cabin crew quality and the occasional smooth, well-run flight”.

That seems plausible to me.

The LLM says that looking at the whole text rather than the titles caused some things to change:

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Aviation is full or tricky initialisms. Do you know your ITCM* from your FOHE**?

A tough one to remember, unless you speak Dutch, is Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij: Royal Dutch Airlines in English and KLM for short.

* Initial Technical Co-ordination/Compliance Meeting

** Fuel Oil Heat Exchange

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This article was written using data from OAG Schedules Analyser: visit oag.com. Thanks OAG!

I recently flew KLM for the first time, on my trip from Newcastle to Cape Town for Embraer’s aviation event which you can read about here and here.

In my business travel career I have sampled quite a few airlines – KLM is number 29. These were flights 520 to 523 by my lifetime logbook. The Amsterdam/Cape Town pair were number 98 and 99 for me in long-haul Business Class.

What impressed me about the KLM flights was how much care and attention the airline had put into the easily overlooked parts of their product development. It was almost as if somebody just like me was overseeing their experience design.

There were also many subtle touchpoints with the brand. The flights were excellent but not quite perfect. And there were two unexplained mysteries.

This article is not a trip report. You will see the elements of a trip report, like product images and assessments. But my main goal is to show how KLM has closely aligned their on-board experience with their brand rather than to comment on how fizzy the champagne is***.

*** Footnote: I don’t like champagne

KLM’s Business Class is not ostentatious luxury

At first glance the look and feel of the cabin was decent. The materials surrounding the seat were pleasant to touch and sit in. The blue and white motifs screamed the KLM livery.

I was interested to note that while my seat on both flights was in good condition, the first flight seemed newer and fresher than the second.

For reference, my planes were PH-BQE to Cape Town and PH-BQO back to Amsterdam. These are both Boeing 777-300ERs, which according to Aerolopa have 35 Business Class, 24 Premium and 322 Economy seats.

I was interested to note that the forward galley was one of the largest Cabin Crew working spaces that I have seen. I believe that excellent service relies more on giving the crew what they need to do their work rather than endless luxuries for the customers, so this was a plus point for KLM.

The blanket and pillow were comfy enough, but there was no mattress. KLM could do better here. The amenity kit, pictured below, was fit for purpose.

When it comes to amenity kits, I like to see things I will actually use in just the right size for a flight rather than having something to take home. In this respect KLM’s pouch fits the bill nicely.

Elements of Dutch flair are all over the experience

We all know that KLM’s livery is blue. So is their non-alcoholic welcome cocktail (image below). Blue is also prominent in the cabin’s Interior Colour Specification, as I mentioned earlier.

But the national colour of Holland is of course orange. And orange also appeared three times:

1. On the moving map the flight time to go is shown in orange while time flown is blue

2. The airline’s signature “Very High Fashioned” cocktail is orange in colour and made with Bols Curacao Dry Orange

3. KLM’s signature dessert is a mango mousse and mangos are famously orange, although the dish itself does not seem to be:

The little bits and bobs that come as part of the experience are reminiscent of Delftware, like the airline’s iconic houses.

Even the safety demo was Delft inspired – KLM animated it with decorated tiles. The end of the video proved that each tile had been fired individually in real life rather than animated on computer. I thought this was impressive.

The attention to detail is well done

Clearly somebody on the KLM team loves to fly themselves.

Even the stitching around the napkin’s button hole is blue:

I was impressed to see that the back of each menu had the date, route and flight number visible through a cutout. This is just what I write on the back of my other menus.

KLM have also carefully designed their boarding passes. One card contains both connecting flights. Over a year that will save a chunk of change in ink, paper and fuel burn.

The crockery and cutlery designed for KLM by Marcel Wenders is full of details. It is a pleasure to look at and to use. The meal shown is breakfast and evening meal ex-Cape Town, plus the picnic box served on Newcastle to Amsterdam by the same designer.

That the after dinner chocolates are in the shape of Delft Blue houses is a lovely touch.

It was good to see KLM serving a dessert wine. I like these. The one served was Tschida Muskat Ottonel Auslese 2022. I know nothing about it other than that it was delicious.

Behind the wall: the few weak points, the breakfast timing puzzle, and odd seat mysteries, plus a very special on-board party.

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The Air Passenger Rights Regulation 2004 known as UK261 or EU261 is a great friend of travellers. It stands alongside the fully-flat bed and seat-back entertainment screens among the greatest innovations in mass market aviation.

When things go wrong, as eventually they must, consumers travelling on British and European Union airlines can be sure that they will be looked after. The same is true for travellers leaving the UK or EU on a foreign airline.

Depending on the circumstances, travellers can expect anything from a wodge of cash compensation to hotel rooms, alternative transport and general care and attention.

Which is not to say that airlines can conjure up hotel rooms like a rabbit from a hat when whole airports break down. But at least there is duty of care.

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Last weekend your favourite airline revenue economist spent two nights hanging out at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport awaiting a flight to London.

Winter Storm Fern had covered much of the United States in ice, snow and more ice. Luckily I found myself holed up in a runway-facing room at the Grand Hyatt rather than stranded in town or sleeping on the terminal floor.

I spent a day watching the snow ploughs and de-icers trundle up and down through the frost whenever there was a break in the weather.

US airspace shown on FlightRadar24, usually awash with little yellow planes, looked strangely green and blue.

A special shout and thank you to Basudeb, who made the arrangements that got me out of what could have been a sticky situation.

Which all got me thinking about passenger assistance…

Atttentive readers will have noted that in this article last week I said:

“Last weekend I had the good fortune to fly on an American Airlines Boeing 787-9 from London Heathrow to Dallas. It was an excellent flight in every respect.”

No prizes for guessing that it was American Airlines who were scheduled to take me back to London on the day when DFW was covered in the slippery stuff.

As a non-UK and non-EU airline, AA was not obliged to look after me like BA did on the way back from Hong Kong last year.

AA’s Conditions of Carriage state simply and brutally:

“Delays beyond our control (like weather)

If the delay is beyond our control, or you book your own arrangements without written authorization from American Airlines, you’re responsible to pay for your hotel, meals and other expenses. An American Airlines agent may be able to help you find a hotel.”

The agent “may” help. They also may not. The CoC also say:

“If your flight was delayed or cancelled and you don’t accept our alternative arrangements, or none were available, we’ll refund the remaining ticket value and any optional fees according to our involuntary refunds policy. Beyond that, we have no further contractual obligation.”

Note the “or none were available” clause. If flights are full American can leave passengers stranded with a refund of half the fare paid and an expensive hotel bill and one-way flight to fund.

I was worried about this as flights were fully booked for many days after the disruption was expected to be over. There was not enough capacity for everyone to rebook within AA’s fee waiver rules, which required all travel to be completed within five days of the original flight.

I also noted that my travel insurance would not cover me for the hotel bill. Of course when I bought the policy the first thing I looked at was the medical cover. I then noted that there was a disruption clause and thought no more about it.

The insurance actually paid out when I was delayed in Hong Kong – thirty Pounds to cover a meal paid as twenty Pounds for the first twelve hours and ten Pounds for the next. Thank you insurers! They might even pay another twenty or thirty Pounds again as I am certainly covered to that extent. But they will not pay for the hotel.

I bought the second most expensive travel product of the three available on the insurer’s website, which has roughly the same disruption coverage to the most expensive.

The most expensive policy would have given me an extra £15 from Hong Kong and an extra £10 from Dallas. Hardly the stuff of one-way tickets and hotel nights.

I expected to be covered for my extra night’s hotel bill in Dallas. Inspecting the small print showed that I was not.

Clearly British insurers expect British customers to book with British or European airlines. I can understand that – they want to keep their own costs down.

I will certainly think twice about not flying with British or EU airlines again.

So back to improving the passenger assistance regulations. By which I mean strengthening consumer protection at a price that airlines will find acceptable even if they would rather not pay it. I think there are two channels.

First up are regulatory remedies, which I see as coming in three “degrees of freedom”.

The simplest regulatory remedy, or first “degree of freedom”, would be to mandate carriers flying to the UK or EU to adopt the same consumer protections on the flight into those territories as they do on the outbound.

The UK could be on strong ground here as it seems that every carrier in the world wants to fly to London. The EU perhaps less so because British aviation is dominated by London while European markets have many more second- and third-tier cities which airlines can take or leave.

I say that overseas airlines should “pay” for the privilege of London access by providing the same duty of care to passengers returning to London from distant lands as they do to consumers leaving London.

From now on I will stick with the UK for simplicity, but the same arguments could be extended to the EU to some extent.

The next “degree of freedom” is slightly stronger for consumers and harsher for airlines.

It would require airlines to offer British consumers or UK-bound travellers UK261 level protection on all their flights when the traveller is on a ticket that involves at least one sector to or from the United Kingdom.

So for example if a traveller was ticketed London to Dallas to Tucson to Dallas to London on American Airlines with stopovers, the airline would be required to provide hotel accommodation in the event of an overnight disruption on Dallas to Tucson or Tucson to Dallas.

The strongest regulatory “degree of freedom” for consumers and harshest for airlines would be to apply UK261 level protection on all the airline’s codeshares with a British carrier.

So for example all oneworld members who codeshare with British Airways would be required to offer British consumers UK261 protection on all their BA-coded flights.

This might be a BA code on the ticket or it could even be a flight which is in the timetable as a potential BA codeshare, even if the consumer is not ticketed under the BA code.

So if a traveller was on AA3125 from Dallas to Tucson and that flight can be sold as BA4790, UK261 applies.

At this point many readers will be pointing out that this will add cost to airlines. Some of you might even claim that it is unfair. I disagree.

Airlines greatly benefit from their codeshare and alliance memberships. And they benefit greatly when they fly to London. This generates a lot of revenue.

Most of the time passengers are shuttled around the globe without incident. UK261 fortunately only applies to a small number of passengers in the grand scheme of things.

I think that most airlines would consider offering UK261 benefits to British consumers and visitors to the UK a price worth paying to continue having access to UK markets or codeshares with UK airlines. They might rather not if they had the choice, but given a take it or leave it arrangement, many would take it.

Next, let’s take a look at market-based remedies. Airlines could offer UK261 protection as ancillary revenue or loyalty status benefit. Governments could use taxation to drive market incentives.

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Last weekend I had the good fortune to fly on an American Airlines Boeing 787-9 from London Heathrow to Dallas. It was an excellent flight in every respect.

Despite cloud cover all the way across the Atlantic and most of the way across North America, the views of an icy Labrador coast and the glaciers inland were spectacular. I was also treated to a fine view of a frosty Chicago.

The food was excellent, the service too. When I thanked one of the Cabin Crew for looking after me she said “we have to!”, but in a way clearly expressing that this was what they wanted to do rather than what they had been told to do.

Flying longhaul is quite a remarkable thing – depending on your cabin you get anything from a flying cinema to a flying bed. Magic lamps and flying carpets would have nothing to beat modern air travel.

The whole experience got me thinking: if air travel can be this good, how can it be improved. That is, how can it be improved at little cost beyond tinkering around the edges to refine existing services and ensuring product consistency.

So I have identified three genuinely new services that I believe no airline does today but I reckon they could implement in practice to improve the experience.

Some might say that these services are impossible. But I say they can be done, and done without significant technical investment. Now read on…

New service one: notify passengers if their bag did not make the flight

When I check a bag it does not always come off cleanly at the other end. On a trip in 2023 my bag did not appear in both directions.

What really upset me about this was that the airline, in this case British Airways, knew in advance that the bag did not make it but did not tell me about it. So I stood at the carousel like a muggins until everyone’s bag had appeared.

If the airline had told me about it I could have submitted my claim online and been on my way into town.

The problem was that I had connected in London from Newcastle. At the time it was the busy summer season and Heathrow’s Baggage Handling System (BHS) was at capacity.

British Airways actively chose to truck bags between Heathrow and Newcastle to get the plane off on time. Which meant they did not make the connections.

The reason I found this out was first that when I arrived back in Newcastle, nobody’s bag came off apart from those who had gate checked. Instead of the airline telling us, we all waited at the carousel for 30 minutes before the all bags delivered message appeared.

To complete the picture, the courier who delivered the bag two days later told me that his firm was fully booked shipping bags between London and Newcastle for every British Airways flight.

I made my conclusions about the BA and the Heathrow BHS from these two experiences.

The thing is, that it would be the easiest thing in the world for airline ground handling agents to print a list of names for passengers whose bags had not made the flight and put them up on a board next to the carousel.

Indeed I experienced this myself when I arrived in Tokyo Haneda Airport, although luckily my bag had made it this time.

There is no special technology required. No radio tags. Just a reconciliation of the bags loaded and the bags not loaded, then a notice printed.

It might be tricky for ground handlers to prioritise this for high volume local flights, but for longhaul it should be the industry standard.

New service two: first-on, last-off

When I arrive in distant lands I am never quite sure how long it is going to take to get through immigration. Sometimes I am straight through. Other times it takes a while.

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In a world where air travel is commoditised it is easy to forget about just how remarkable it is to be able to fly. Modern air travel is an incredible amalgamation of technology, engineering and economics.

Travellers in western economies can spend a day travelling across an ocean and back in a flying cinema in exchange for a week’s pay. Miles and points collectors can do the same but with the bonus of a flying bed.

Air travel has become such a commonplace consumer product that few ever take a step back and wonder about the miracles of ingenuity that make it possible.

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One area easily overlooked is the seats in the cabin. These complex engineering products can contain thousands of parts and have been through rigorous certification processes to ensure that every traveller stands a good chance of being safe in an emergency.

In today’s article I am going to be taking a look at the five stages that airline cabin programmes go through to take a seating design and make it fit to fly.

During my time at Qatar Airways I was fortunate enough to see each of the five stages in action. So I will tell you about what I saw.

This is the seventh article in my “Oliver explains” series. I take things that are either important tools in Revenue Management’s tool kit, sound a bit odd or seem complicated. Hopefully I will be able to make them sound simple.

Strictly speaking cabin programmes are not a Revenue Management concept – but I think that all revenue managers should know about them since the seat is an integral part of the product, especially in premium cabins.

You can read the other six “Oliver explains” articles here:

1. Why is Business Class sometimes cheaper than Economy?

2. How do airline overbooking algorithms work?

3. How is airline revenue accounting data used in revenue management?

4. What is Revenue Integrity?

5. ATPCO fare categories

6. Why are some plane tickets so expensive?

Step 1 – ITCM: Initial Technical Co-ordination Meeting

An airline’s programme to design and develop a new seat involves a large number of stakeholders.

At the airline there will be cabin engineering specialists, product designers, a fleet planner or two and maybe even the odd airline revenue economist.

As the programme moves on more people get involved. For example when London-based British Airways built the first fully-flat bed in Business Class there were sales and distribution challenges of getting reverse-facing seats into the selling platforms.

So if you meet people who worked in BA’s Commercial team at the time they will often tell you what they did to make what was then called New Club World a success.

But at the ITCM such commercial considerations are a long way away. The initial team of airline staff is small.

There is a good chance that an airline will have engaged with an industrial designer and already have a concept prepared before the ITCM.

Tangerine did the original New Club World bed for BA and also designed BA’s upcoming First Class. At Qatar Airways we used Priestman Goode for the projects I worked on.

The aircraft manufacturer will also be in the room. My experience was that the representatives from Airbus and Boeing were extremely keen, perhaps excessively so, on placards with safety messages.

Managing the process of keeping passengers informed about safety while keeping the seat aesthetically pleasing is a key challenge. “Not to be used as a seat” probably looks better sewed in to the fabric of a footrest than as a big plastic sign above the rest.

Some airlines are better at handling this than others.

Finally, the product supplier will be around too. I worked with Recaro on Qatar Airways’ Economy Class and B/E Aerospace (now Collins Aerospace} for Business and Super First Class. Shout-outs to Kay and Bob, who will know who they are! :-)

Each of these groups are meant to work together but in practice have their own competing ideas, priorities and opinions. If not managed carefully, these can lead to over-spending, project delays and extra work.

As the first stage in the programme, a critical part of the ITCM is the decision making process. The airline and their partners all agree on who can make final and binding decisions.

As such the ITCM is not about showing the designs and models. It is about authorisations, customer acceptance criteria and airline expectations. These meetings feel much more like contractual discussions than innovation and design sessions.

One example of the ITCM’s decisions coming into practice later in a programme regarded the footrest on Qatar Airways’ A380 Super First Class.

There was discussion about the size of the space under the foot rest and what size bag it needed to accommodate. Such a detail was of course not covered contractually. The decision was taken in accordance with delegation of authorities decided at the ITCM.

Step 2 – PDR: Preliminary Design Review

In the PDR the designers and seat suppliers have their computer models ready. At this stage calls between the project members are roughly weekly.

I attended the PDR for Qatar Airways A380 Super First Class in Miami on 29^th and 30^th November 2011.

Due to the complexity of the seat with various cupboards, storages, wells and so on Airbus representatives were particularly active in their demands for unsightly placards at this stage. I remember Qatar Airways’ project leaders being particularly frustrated by this.

PDR is also the stage where airlines begin to realise which of the design elements are likely to work well, which can be improved and which may be problematic and need to be changed.

One issue that came up was table design. As engineers, the B/E Aerospace team were keen that the seats on the left and right hand sides of the plane should be exactly symmetrical.

From a service design perspective this does not work well in First Class, due to the formal nature of the service.

The tables had been designed so that the main course plate (size defined in advance) would be in the middle of the table with the forks on the left and knives on the right. All as they should be.

The problem arose with the side plate, which should be placed on the left. For seats A and F this was not a problem – the side plate could be placed on the are the table comes out of. For seats E and K though, the table would ideally be a bit longer on the left to accommodate the plate.

The engineers won. The tables are symmetrical.

Step 3 – CDR: Critical Design Review

The PDR is intended to highlight some of the major design successes and flaws in a new seat. The CDR is intended to wrap them up and produce something pretty close to workable.

So while at the PDR everything is done on the computer, by the time a programme reaches CDR there is a rough model in place which people can sit in and play with various features, even though they may not work yet.

I attended the CDR for Qatar Airways Super First Class in Tucson on 9^th and 10^th February 2012. It was held the day after the B/E Aerospace blue sky thinking session in Winston-Salem that came up with what become the Qsuite.

After the session B/E Aerospace kindly paid for programme boss Xia and me to go stargazing at Kitt Peak National Observatory, which I would recommend.

Step 4 – TSR: Test Seat Review

Things really heat up at the Test Seat Review. By this stage something much like a working seat is in place. Motors whirr and actuators move the seat. You can push the buttons and make things work. Lights shine. The trim and finish looks polished.

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British Airways no longer serves English breakfasts on flights within England. Effective last Wednesday the porky plate (pictured from October 2025) was no longer available on eight of the airline’s shortest routes. You can see a map of the affected routes on the Great Circle Mapper.

I think this decision is daft. It removes an iconic product, generates poor headlines and suggests that BA’s Customer Experience team have no experience being customers.

It also, as I will show, probably saves just over a million Pounds. This suspicious number is the smallest large amount of money and suggests managers looking for short-term cost savings rather than long-term revenue growth.

Read on to find out why…

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This article was written using data from OAG Schedules Analyser: visit oag.com. Thanks OAG!

BA have form taking bad decisions when it comes to menu development. In October 2024 they decided to offer their longhaul First and Club World (Business Class) customers brunch.

The main courses like waffles or sausages with hash browns were followed by chocolatey desserts and washed down with a nice glass of red or white wine. The media christened the debacle “brunchgate”.

I demonstrated here on Airline Revenue Economics that flights leaving in time for a brunch to genuinely be of interest, i.e. served before 11am in London, represented only 1.1% of Club World seats.

BA chose timings that meant a full 20.7% of Club World and 25.0% of First passengers suffered the brunch.

Unsurprisingly, the airline reverted to regular service after just a few months of complaints.

The head of Customer Experience at the time recently left the airline. Removing the full English breakfast seems like his parting gift.

He was apparently not required to serve his notice and will be on the payroll but not at work. According to the press release he will be remembered for his “enthusiasm for Christmas”. Make of that what you will.

The full English breakfast is an iconic product for British Airways

I enjoy flying British Airways.

Their Christmas decorations last year were truly impressive. Across the rest of the year the seats, schedules, catering and loyalty products all work well for me personally. The pricing is realistic for a small business owner.

My only niggle with the airline is that the lounge catering at Heathrow is, in my opinion, poor. More on that later.

Removing breakfast from extremely short and domestic flights will not affect me personally – I try not to travel early enough to take them.

I enjoyed my full English breakfast on a recent flight to Hong Kong (pictured below). The menu said “Our Club beds are famously flat, but you can’t say the same about our breakfasts.” BA themselves recognise that breakfasts are important to their customers.

Now I appreciate that not everybody enjoys the full English breakfast. They are fatty and filling. Eaten frequently the tasty grill may well be a shortcut to health issues.

But the key point about the English breakfast is that they are a treat. Most people do not eat them every day. They have a sense of occasion, much like that world-wide Business Class stalwart a glass of champagne.

A decent full English is certainly a Business Class level option.

The English breakfast is also iconic British cooking. As a London-based carrier, it seems daft for BA to remove the most English part of their menu from all their flights in England.

Removing the breakfast has generated poor headlines among people who buy Business Class tickets

At the time of writing the story had generated 69.4k views on FlyerTalk, a bulletin board, and 220 comments on HeadforPoints, the UK’s leading miles and points blog.

Both sites are read extensively by First and Business Class flyers. This is a lot of chatter in the relevant market segments.

For comparison a year-long thread about BA’s flight compensation policy on FlyerTalk generated 114.2k views and 871 comments in 2025.

A fact-based thread about menus in BA’s Concorde Room, started on the same day as the breakfast thread, generated 569 views and 8 comments. A more speculative 2026 predictions thread started the day before breakfastgate was announced generated 13.8k views and 81 comments.

HeadforPoints published two other articles on the same day and these had generated 4 and 21 comments last time I looked.

Clearly people who buy tickets care about the English breakfast. Even though it will not affect me personally, it makes me think badly of BA too.

BA should have realised this. They trialled the elimination of the full breakfast on Scottish routes in September. It was replaced with a fruit plate, apparently with four pieces of melon, two of pineapple, two blueberries and a raspberry, according to the HeadforPoints report.

The full Scottish* has now returned. Clearly feedback was not positive.

No excuses.

* For my non-British readers, full English and full Scottish breakfasts are generally the same, except that one is served in England and the other in Scotland. The full Scottish may have a few additions, such as haggis or Lorne sausage. On British Airways they are the same.

Further evidence that BA’s Customer Experience team have little experience as customers

The table below shows every British Airways service on the eight routes in question that is scheduled to leave before 10am during a “normal” business week in May.

It includes Heathrow and Gatwick services, which are definitely suffering a breakfast loss.

It also includes London City Airport services, which are operated by BA Cityflyer, a separate company with it’s own Air Operator Certificate and it’s own catering budget. I suspect that London City services may retain their full breakfasts and have not included it’s numbers in the analysis that follows.

More than 2,500 breakfast seats are available on flights before 8am.

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Early lessons for young aviation economists include the importance of economies of scale and scope in the industry.

Larger airlines who are able to spread cost elements like their headquarters and operational licenses across many flights enjoy a cost advantage per seat over those with less flights. Those are the economies of scale.

Larger airlines also enjoy economies of scope. On the cost side, examples include offering both passenger and cargo options on the same flight, spreading cost over two different services.

Economies of scale and scope translate into revenue growth too. Broader networks (more destinations) and deeper connectivity (more connecting options) generate more consumer choice. This translates into aggregate demand and revenue growth. And perhaps pricing power too.

But in addition to economies of scale and scope there is another “economies of” element – economies of speed. Faster airline and airport services generate advantages for operators and customers.

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There are some interesting diseconomies of speed too, when faster services do not necessarily enhance the passenger experience.

In this article I investigate the economics of speed across airlines and the cities they serve.

I would like to see a bit more discussion about the economics of speed in the airline and airports business.

Conversation is rightly dominated by core airline products – fleet, network, cabins and airport services. And modern airline retailing has it’s role to play too.

But we should not forget that it is the speed and convenience of air travel that is the industry’s absolute number one main product.

So read on…

The economics of speed for airlines

The Airbus A300 was the first twin-engined wide-body aircraft. Launched in 1974 by Air France, it apparently flew at up to Mach 0.78. The latest Airbus A330neo on the other hand can reach Mach 0.86.

Faster airliners translate directly into commercial advantages for airlines. When shoppers seek out the fastest flights, speedy planes appear at the top of the list. Sheer air speed capacity can crowd out even the whizziest of modern airline retailing algorithms.

Speed helps passengers reach their destinations faster, so they can spend more time at home, in the office or on holiday doing the things they want to do. Faster planes may burn more fuel, but they contribute to the economically efficient consumption of other resources, including time.

Speed impacts passenger comfort in the air too. Faster planes fly higher, potentially leading to less turbulence on the average flight.

Physics determines how fast planes can fly. Economic geography determines how quickly they reach their destination.

Distance matters. Cities and countries that are closer together tend to trade more with each other simply because it is cheaper to do so. As a result there is almost always much more capacity on short-haul flights than long-distance ones.

But culture and history matters too. There are six direct flights today on two airlines between London and Hong Kong today. London and Singapore is served by seven flights, operated by three carriers. And New York has a whopping 28 flights on six airlines.

All three of these city pairs are characterised by multi-national firms with offices in each city, English as the business language and a common British heritage. No wonder there are so many flights.

The diseconomies of speed for airlines

Sometimes speed is inconvenient for airlines. Planes get to their destination so fast that passengers are faced with a poor choice. They can either choose a day out of the office or a bad night of sleep leading to low productivity the next day.

Your favourite airline revenue economist once managed seven and half hours of sleep on a six hour red-eye from Newark to London thanks to a tarmac delay at Heathrow, but that is the exception not the norm.

I once had a dream while sleeping on a 747 from Bahrain to Heathrow, arriving at zero dark hundred hours, that the Captain was announcing a two hour delay while we needed to circle.

Imagine my disappointment to be shaken awake by the crew and realising that the Captain was actually on the tannoy announcing an early arrival…

The daylight service from New York to London is sometimes called the Chairman’s special because only the Chairman dare take it. All five airlines on the route operate a daylight option today.

But thanks to laptops and on-board connectivity, some travellers are now arguably better off with an OK day of work on the plane rather than a bad night of sleep.

jetBlue certainly thinks so – the route’s late-entrant underdog has chosen to make one of it’s two eastbound services a waking hours flight rather than a red-eye.

Supersonic Concorde was a boon westbound as passengers arrived in New York before they left London, according to local clocks.

The way back was a tougher sell as Concorde was simply too fast. In the March 1993 timetable a 9am departure from New York arrived in London at 5.40pm. All the working day gone and probably only two hours to actually work on the plane.

A lunchtime departure left New York at 1.45pm and arrived in London at 10.25pm, too late to actually do anything apart from going to Fabric or the Ministry of Sound, which I doubt were priorities for Concorde’s clientele, and too early to sleep if you were on New York time.

For the New York route, Concorde’s speed eastbound was a problem not an asset. Many travellers flew Concorde out and First or Club World back, so British Airways sold eastbound Concorde on deals to agents and cruise operators.

The economics of speed for the cities that airlines serve

Airports and the cities they serve are arguably even more impacted by the economics of speed than airlines.

The growth of cities like Dubai and Singapore in the last 50 years has been powered by their hub airports and flag carrying airlines. For these cities, air connectivity fuels inward investment, jobs and prosperity.

In high tech fields, firms must be able to tap into global supply chains to get sophisticated parts and components just in time and at the best possible prices. Blagnac Airport near Toulouse, home of Airbus, is surrounded by all sorts of snazzy technology and logistics providers.

It is no coincidence that so many races in the 2026 Formula One Grands Prix season will be held at airport-driven cities. Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Barcelona, Las Vegas, Lusail (Qatar), Madrid and Singapore, among others, all have well-served airports that engineers, cars and spare part inventories can be easily flown into.

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The true measure of an airline’s service is not how amazing the experience is when things are going well. I reckon the best airlines are those who put things right when they have gone wrong with as little difficulty for passengers as possible.

My flight back from holiday was delayed overnight. The way that British Airways handled it I thought was brillia…

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“I thought you’d like two!” Those were the welcome words said to me on a British Airways flight from London to Beijing last August on delivery of the sticky toffee pudding (pictured).

There may well be times and places for turning down two helpings of pudd. But longhaul Business Class flights are not any of them.

There is something special about going to the airport and getting on a plane. It puts people in the mood to celebrate. Champagne at 5am? No problem! Pints with breakfast at zero dark hundred? Good idea!

Airlines work hard to get the right catering on the right planes. But even before the cooking and loading is begun menus need to be designed and ingredients ordered in bulk.

Figuring out which meals might be popular on each flight and how many should be loaded is a classic resource allocation problem.

So in today’s article we will be looking at the economics of in-flight dining. Here is the menu:

Q1. How do airlines design dishes and decide which meal options go on which flights?

Q2. What are the pros and cons of pre-ordered meals and in-flight chefs?

Q3. How can airlines align special meals and menu choices to serve passengers effectively and optimise waste?

Q4. Can the move to offer-order help?

The focus will be on full-service carriers and long-haul.

Short-haul can be a different beast. For an example of a compelling short-haul catering product consider Spanish airline Iberia’s “dos cervezas” (two beers). The product is inspiring and creates a sense of fun about a flight.

Next week I will be on holiday – off to Hong Kong. Airline Revenue Economics will return on Mon-1-Dec.

Q1. How do airlines design dishes and decide which meal options go on which flights?

Flight kitchens at major airports can do anything if you give them enough budget.

Japanese meals are among the most expensive to prepare because there is a worldwide shortage of chefs skilled in the art. So airlines who want good Japanese meals have to pay the same wages that those chefs would otherwise earn in leading restaurants.

Menus can be planned more than a year ahead.

A brigade of development chefs will ideally look at the network, the airline’s passenger profiles and feedback about recent menu items. This will include feedback from the passengers (is it tasty), the cabin crew (is it easy to serve) and the flight kitchen (is it easy to prepare).

Their first consideration is the passengers. They need to know three things:

1. On each flight, where are most passengers travelling to and from (i.e. point to point or final onward destination)

2. What is the expected nationality breakdown of passengers to give an idea about cultural preferences – some nationalities (e.g. Japanese or Kuwaiti) are more informative about cultural background than others (e.g. United States)

3. Whether or not passengers on a certain flight have a propensity to order special meals or not.

There are also the airline’s brand values to consider. Turkish Airlines has a distinctive and proud food culture, and the desire to deliver on it.

When I was at Qatar Airways we partnered with four celebrity chefs. Chef Anton Mosimann was keen to sign up but went to do the catering for the London Olympics instead.

In the end I wrote the contracts for Chef Nobu (modern Asian), Chef Tom Aikens (modern European), Chef Vineet Bhatia (modern Indian) and the legendary TV star Chef Ramzi (modern middle east, pictured below – check out the background left for a crate of glassware samples).

Singapore Airlines has a long-standing culinary panel with a diverse range of chefs that are slightly more Asian focused. Qantas has a relationship with Rockpool, a fine dining outfit in Sydney.

The chefs and their brands lend a touch of glamour and pizazz to an airline’s offering. They participate in PR and make their airlines look good, boosting demand and hence revenue.

Once the menu selection is designed and offerings determined for each flight airlines need to decide how to rotate them. A typical airline might generate three or four sets of menus a year.

For an airline with three sets of menus there are essentially five options for menu rotation, summarised in the table below.

Option 1 is to rotate the menus once per month. Each month the menu changes.

Regular passengers who take many flights in a short time may be delighted with the choice. Passengers who only fly in say Jan, May and Sep will complain that the choices do not change enough.

Some passengers will inevitably love the roast chicken so much they want it every time and would prefer the menu to never change. Truly airlines cannot make everyone happy all of the time.

Option 2 is to let one menu serve for four months. Passengers who take many flights in a short time will moan that every time the food is the same. Passengers who take a few trips spread through the year will see a change.

Option 3 is to do one menu every two months. This has similar advantages and disadvantages to option one.

Options 4 and 5 are a bit more complex. Airlines would use these when they have customer research indicating that it is the right thing to do.

In addition to the menu rotation described above it is also important that as far as possible connecting passengers are not presented with the same menu on both flights.

Some airlines more. keen on cost management might use the rotation pattern to manage east-west transfers. Others more creative may design different menu sets for eastbound flights and different sets for inbound.

True story: the Libyan aviation regulator sent a note to Qatar Airways and all other airlines serving Libyan airports that human waste was not an acceptable ingredient. The mind boggles as to why they saw the need to send that out…

Q2. What are the pros and cons of pre-ordered meals and in-flight chefs?

Turkish Airlines has for many years offered an in-flight chef with a catering background and a special uniform. It is part of their commitment to showcasing their national food heritage.

Sounds good. So why do other airlines not have in-flight chefs?

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If you want to fly from Bangkok to Doha next Friday, returning a week later, travelling on Qatar Airways is an expensive way to do it.

The Qatari national carrier wants 28,040 Thai Baht (£648.70) at the time of writing. Meanwhile Gulf Air, Oman Air, Kuwait Airways, Etihad and Air India will all be happy to carry you the 3,285 miles there and 3,285 miles back for between 9,185 and 2,490 less of your hard-earned Bahts.

It is well known that airlines charge a premium for direct flights. These come with the change of having more uninterrupted sleep, no risk of misconnection and less chance of your bag being on it’s way to Sydney when you are arriving in Doha.

But connecting flights can have advantages too. Airlines need to know what these may be to figure out when and if they can ever safely charge more for an indirect service, given levels of demand.

Interestingly, Dubai-based Emirates and it’s little sister flydubai offer options into Doha next week which are only more expensive than Qatar Airways. They want 3,520 Baht (16.9%) more than the oryx express.

This might be because Emirates have already sold more seats and are saving seats for the highest fare payers. With only a week to go that might be plausible.

But an inventory search using ITA Matrix suggests that Qatar Airways is offering fares in it’s 11^th of 13 Economy fare classes, i.e. the third lowest. Emirates is opening up it second lowest fare class in Economy. Hardly suggestive of flights that are expected to be constrained.

It seems to me that Emirates perceives advantages of being more expensive than Qatar Airways, despite having only an indirect option. Some of these advantages may be based on solid economics. Others may be more frivolous.

Read on to find out more…

First up, let’s consider the frivolous reasons why some people may prefer indirect flights – I think there are at least six

1. Passengers get the chance to eat one or two extra meals (depending on stage lengths) and maybe more if you have lounge access at the connecting point, making indirect flights the ideal option for the hungry traveller.

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Three Airbus A330-300s that used to fly for groovy-funky Virgin Atlantic will soon be in service for Thai Airways. Nothing unusual about that – aircraft change hands all the time.

What seems a bit odd is that Sir Richard’s planes are set up with three cabins – Upper Class (biz), Premium and Economy – and Thai will be selling what was formerly Business Class as “Premium Economy Plus”.

Please do not consider this as a move of strategic genius by Thai that other airlines should emulate. The idea of flat beds in Premium Economy may have merit. But Thai have a track record of questionable decision making, especially when it comes to their fleet.

It should also not be taken as the cynical idea that Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class Suite, introduced in late 2003, is now so old that it is merely the world’s best Premium Economy.

Upper Class remains a comfortable way to cross the Atlantic and delivers the core product of Business Class – space, privacy and comfort with the chance of a reasonable night’s sleep.

This is not the first time that prestigious seats have been down-marketed to a lower cabin.

When bmi British Midland put lie-flat seats in their A330s in the late noughties their old cradles were rebranded as Premium Economy.

Flat beds first appeared in First Class on British Airways. They spread to Business as either fully-flat, also with BA, or lie-flat “ski slopes” like Virgin Atlantic’s short-lived chrome and red J2000.

It is not the first time that flat beds have made an appearance below Business Class either. Air New Zealand’s Skycouch converts three Economy seats into a bed suitable for young or young at heart lovers.

In today’s article I want to explore the idea of flat beds in Premium Economy. I will attempt to answer three questions:

Q1. Might flat beds be a viable Premium Economy product?

Q2. In what sorts of scenarios might flat beds be a new revenue generator for airlines?

Q3. Which airlines might be candidates to launch a flat bed Premium Economy product?

But before we do that I need to make three points clear about Thai Airways and their new Premium Economy Plus.

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Flat beds in Business Class deliver a clear value proposition. Passengers flying in these comfy seats can expect to get some decent sleep. They will arrive at their destination fresher and more ready for the day ahead than if they had flown in Economy.

Bloggers and industry commentators have created an enormous pool of content describing each airline’s Business Class seats and associated perks in great detail.

But there is surprisingly little analysis out there covering how much sleep these products actually deliver.

This article is the third in my “Battle of the Beds” series, which aims to model how much passengers actually sleep on planes.

A flat bed on it’s own is not enough to generate a good night’s sleep. Planes also have to leave when passengers are tired.

This might be late at night, around or after a normal bed-time. It could also be early in the morning, when passengers have arrived early at the airport and still wish they were tucked in at home.

The “Battle of the Beds” compares two (or maybe more in the future…) airlines against each other. My model calculates two numbers:

1. Hours of sleep per passenger

2. Sleep Factor, the proportion of the flight that passengers are asleep.

These numbers matter for passengers and fleet planners. Business Class travellers choose convenient flight times that trade-off the sleep they need to get with their arrival time.

Fleet planners meanwhile need to understand how important sleep is to their travellers. Airlines with passenger profiles willing to pay for sleep should invest in comfy beds and align their schedule for sleeping. Airlines without passengers willing to pay for sleep might prefer more daylight-oriented schedules.

The first Battle of the Beds compared BA’s Club World with Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class.

It estimated that the average BA Club World passenger gets two hours and 58 minutes of sleep, ten minutes longer than the average Upper Class traveller.

This was due to BA’s slightly longer flight profile – Virgin Atlantic does not operate long flights to Asia like Heathrow to Singapore or Hong Kong that are part of BA’s network.

But the average Virgin Atlantic passengers spent a slightly longer portion of their flight asleep. Virgin Atlantic’s Sleep Factor is 37.6% and BA’s is 36.7%.

This is because Virgin Atlantic’s overnight network is focused on US East Coast to Europe, where flights are short and if you are going to try and get a good night’s sleep you need to try and shut your eyes for the whole flight.

The second Battle of the Beds compared Etihopian Airlines (ET) Cloud Nine with Kenya Airways (KQ) Premier World.

The average ET and KQ passenger gets just over two and a half hours sleep respectively, according to my model. That is just under 30 minutes less sleep than passengers on British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.

The Sleep Factor however is quite different across the two airlines. The average ET Business Class passenger spends 50.0% of their flight asleep. That is much higher than on KQ (37.9%), British Airways (36.7%) and Virgin Atlantic (37.6%).

ET Cloud Nine generates 61,199 hours (2,550 days) of sleep per week and KQ Premier World generates 5,527 hours (230 days).

In today’s Battle of the Beds we are heading to the far east to examine two Asian airlines, Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines. Both serve entrepots with high GDP per capita and strong Business Class demand.

To see the results, read on… To see how the model works, there is an appendix at the end.

This article was written using data from OAG Schedules Analyser: visit oag.com. Thanks OAG!

Comparing the two fleets

Both Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines operate single- and twin-aisle planes. I eliminated the single-aisles because these have cradle seats rather than beds.

But both airlines also have twin-aisles with flat beds that operate on short-ish flights and separate fleets twin-aisles with slightly different flat beds that ply the longer routes.

I conducted two pieces of analysis. The first one considers the entire twin-aisle fleet. The second the long-range twin-aisle fleet only.

For Cathay Pacific I considered the long-range twin-aisle fleet to be aircraft that only operate routes longer than 2,500 miles. There seems to be a natural division point here in the schedule. This means their Boeing 777-300ERs with 294,361 or 368 seats, their Airbus A350-900s with 280 seats and their Airbus A350-1000s with 334 seats.

For Singapore Airlines I considered the long-range rwin-aisle fleet to include the 253 seat Airbus A350-900, the all-premium 161 seat A350-900 that flies to New York, the A380 and the Boeing 777-300ER. The other twin-aisle planes are the A350-900 with 303 seats and the Boeing 787-10 with 337 seats.

The Singapore Airlines division is not quite as clean as Cathay Pacific’s. The Lion City’s “regional” A350-900s are deployed on routes up to 3,815 miles long and the 787-10s fly up to 3,354 miles from Changi Airport. This overlaps with the long-range twin-aisle fleet.

The source for all configurations is aerolopa.com, which is essential viewing for anybody who loves aircraft interiors.

The results – all twin-aisles

The tables below show that across the entire twin-aisle fleet the hours of sleep per passenger are slightly higher on Singapore Airlines – 2 hours 12 minutes compared to 1 hour 53 minutes average on Cathay Pacific.

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Turkish Airlines and Qatar Airways rose to greatness somewhat in tandem. But while the management team at Qatar Airways Tower focused on copying Emirates, the folks at Turkish Airlines were busy innovating.

The Istanbul-based carrier turned their long connection times into a bonus by offering free tours of Istanbul to passengers in transit. They introduced on-board chefs in a nod to Turkey’s food culture. And just like in Qatar, they got to work on building a new hub airport as the old one was getting just too small.

Not everything worked perfectly. One colleague in Doha received a hand-written boarding pass at Doha for her flight to Istanbul, which makes you wonder… But just like Qatar Airways, Turkish Airlines has become a giant of middle eastern aviation.

So a couple of months ago I was not surprised when some Airline Revenue Economics readers mentioned Turkish Airlines in my response to my article about Qatar Airways’ greatest weakness.

What did I say about Qatar Airways?

I had written about how inconsistent business class seating harmed the Doha-based airline’s pricing power. Qatar Airways offers no less than nine Business Class seats. Many passengers will not be receiving the same seat on different flights.

It is also possible that Qatar Airways passengers are at risk of booking a flight and expecting one Business Class seat, but actually flying another due to a last-minute aircraft swap.

I calculated that 21.2% of Qatar Airways’ Business Class capacity was on what I called “uncommitted” planes. These are aircraft with the same number of seats in both Business and Economy Class cabins, but different models of seats.

So a passenger expecting a Qsuite might get a MiniPod or a Super Diamond. Qatar Airways has a Qsuite guarantee and will switch your flight if necessary. But that is not so helpful when you arrive at Doha in the middle of the night and just want to reach your destination.

This matters because pricing power and product quality go hand-in-hand. Many passengers spending thousands of Dollars on a Business Class ticket care either deeply or at least to some extent about exactly what they get.

At the end of the day, passengers who do not get the seat they expect will form a dim view of the airline’s reliability. That will cost Qatar Airways demand and dilute revenue. Put simply, it will lose them money.

So why is Turkish Airlines relevant?

Readers responded to my Qatar Airways article by pointing out that Qatar Airways is not the only airline with inconsistent seating.

Turkish Airlines has no less than ten different types of Business Class seat, one more than Qatar Airways.

So in this article I wanted to investigate whether or not Turkish Airlines are at the same risk of not getting the seat they expect as Qatar Airways.

I will conclude that:

1. Turkish Airlines passengers may not be as at risk of an aircraft substitution as they are at Qatar Airways, so they should get the seat they booked

2. Nevertheless Turkish Airlines passengers stand a high chance of experiencing inconsistent products when they connect, but inconsistency may not matter as much as it does on Qatar Airways

3. The large number of Turkish Airlines single-aisle aircraft may make the airline unattractive to passengers travelling between Europe and the Middle East, as they will essentially get to use a short-haul product on a medium- to long-haul journey.

Looking at the Turkish Airlines network and the fleet

This article was written using data from OAG Schedules Analyser: visit oag.com. Thanks OAG!

I took what should be a typical day in Istanbul – Wednesday 15^th October 2025. This is not a public holiday in Turkey and it is outside the peak summer and Christmas leisure travel seasons. It is not half term in the UK – I am not sure about other countries.

Turkish Airlines has 1,234 flights and 250,438 seats available for sale on this day. They will generate 72.9 million Available Seat Kilometres (ASK) of capacity.

The day’s longest flight will be Istanbul to Mexico City and back, 11,381 km each way on a Boeing 787-9 with 30 Business Class flat-bed seats.

A look at aerolopa.com, an essential resource for plane lovers, shows that the ten Business Class seats on offer with Turkish Airlines are spread across 27 sets of aircraft.

I gave them all a letter identifier:

A: a flat bed available on some Airbus A330-200s, some Airbus A330-300s and all Boeing 777-300ERs, with 2-2-2 config on the Airbus fleet and 2-3-2 on the Boeings.

Type A is the “standard” seat which seems to appear in most of Turkish Airlines’ advertising.

B and C: different flat beds configured 2-2-2 on some A330-200s and some A330-300s.

D: a cradle seat only available on the A330-300.

E and F: two different types of staggered 1-2-1 seats, with type E on some Airbus A350-900s and Boeing 787-9s and type F on some other Airbus A350-900s.

G and H: cradle seats, H on some Airbus single-aisles and the Boeing 737 Maxes, and G on other Boeing 737s.

I and J: blue upholstery with a table (I) or grey upholstery without a table (J) convertible seats configured 3-3 with the centre seat blocked on some Airbus single-aisles.

1. Turkish Airlines passengers may not be as at risk of an aircraft substitution as they are at Qatar Airways, so they should get the seat they booked

Qatar Airways has some aircraft of the same model that have the same capacity in each cabin but different types of Business Class seat.

This is particularly true for the 412 seat B777-300ERs. These planes have 24 seats in Business Class and 388 seats in Economy Class. Those 24 comfy seats come in both MiniPod and Qsuite flavours. Qatar Airways could easily substitute at the last minute for operational reasons.

The same problem turns up on the A350-900. These planes have either Qsuites or Super Diamonds. There are 36 Business Class and 247 Economy Class seats on both sub-fleets.

There are also a number of other aircraft at risk of substitution. The B777-200LR has 42 Business Class seats in either it’s MiniPod or Qsuite configurations.

The plane with Qsuites only has four fewer seats in Economy Class than the one with MiniPods. Unless flights are extremely close to capacity the airline might substitute one for the other under operational requirements.

The A330-300s might be vulnerable to substitution too. The Apex version ex Oman Air has 24 Business Class seats and 265 seats in Economy Class. Meanwhile the version configured with Qatar Airways’ Diamond has 30 Business and 275 Economy seats. Substitution is not implausible if Economy demand is a bit high and Business demand a bit low.

The table below shows that this is not the case for Turkish Airlines.

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Flat beds in Business Class deliver a clear value proposition. Passengers flying in these comfy seats can expect to get some decent sleep. They will arrive at their destination fresher and more ready for the day ahead than if they had flown in Economy.

Bloggers and industry commentators have created an enormous pool of content describing each airline’s Business Class seats and associated perks in great detail.

But there is surprisingly little analysis out there covering how much sleep these products actually deliver.

This article is the second in my “Battle of the Beds” series, which aims to model how much passengers actually sleep on planes.

A flat bed on it’s own is not enough to generate a good night’s sleep. Planes also have to leave when passengers are tired.

This might be late at night, around or after a normal bed-time. It could also be early in the morning, when passengers have arrived early at the airport and still wish they were tucked in at home.

The “Battle of the Beds” compares two (or maybe more in the future…) airlines against each other. My model calculates two numbers:

1. Hours of sleep per passenger

2. Sleep Factor, the proportion of the flight that passengers are asleep.

These numbers matter for passengers and fleet planners. Business Class travellers choose convenient flight times that trade-off the sleep they need to get with their arrival time.

Fleet planners meanwhile need to understand how important sleep is to their travellers. Airlines expecting to generate more hours of sleep per passenger and a higher Sleep Factor

The first Battle of the Beds compared BA’s Club World with Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class.

It estimated that the average BA Club World passenger gets two hours and 58 minutes of sleep, ten minutes longer than the average Upper Class traveller.

This was due to BA’s slightly longer flight profile – Virgin Atlantic does not operate long flights to Asia like Heathrow to Singapore or Hong Kong that are part of BA’s network.

But the average Virgin Atlantic passengers spent a slightly longer portion of their flight asleep. Virgin Atlantic’s Sleep Factor is 37.6% and BA’s is 36.7%.

This is because Virgin Atlantic’s overnight network is focused on US East Coast to Europe, where flights are short and if you are going to try and get a good night’s sleep you need to try and shut your eyes for the whole flight.

Today I am taking two completely different airlines: Ethiopian Airlines and Kenya Airways. These airlines also have branded names for their Business Class cabins.

Ethiopian Airlines call their Business Class “Cloud Nine”. Kenya Airways call theirs “Premier World”. Since these may not be as familiar to Airline Revenue Economics readers as Club World and Upper Class, I prefix them with their airline IATA codes, ET and KQ respectively.

These airlines operate in entirely different macroeconomic conditions to BA and Virgin Atlantic. So when I present the results, which is up first, you will see they are quite different to the BA and Virgin Atlantic study.

Next I comment on the specific characteristics of the two airlines’ networks.

Finally and as an appendix I explain how the model works, which repeats what I said in the first Battle of the Beds article.

This article was written using data from OAG Schedules Analyser: visit oag.com. Thanks OAG!

The results

The tables below show the results. Only twin-aisle flights are included. That is Boeing 787s on KQ and a selection of Boeing 777s, 787s and Airbus A350s on ET.

I assumed 73.4% Seat Factor for ET and 75.2% Seat Factor for KQ. These are the Load Factors shown in their latest annual reports (caution: as this article explains, Seat Factor and Load Factor are not quite the same).

The average ET and KQ passenger gets just over two and a half hours sleep respectively, according to my model. That is just under 30 minutes less sleep than passengers on British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.

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Economy Class should get a whole lot more love than it does. At reasonable notice a London-based traveller can fly almost anywhere for less than £750 ($1,030). Just over a week’s post-tax wage for the median earner. That is a miracle of technology and economics.

Economy seats can be extremely comfortable. If you had one mounted to be your desk chair it would probably be one of the best desk chairs you ever had.

The challenges of flying Economy come from a high density use of the available space by airlines and the psychological perceptions of that space for passengers.

As large seat backs have been developed to incorporate screens (good), the cabin has become cluttered and stressful (bad).

Ergonomic guidelines were developed in an age before the latest ultra-strong and ultra-light-weight materials. An industry standard for seat-back screens emerged before most travellers started bringing aboard content for their own devices.

It is not yet clear what ergonomics and features most influence how comfortable today’s passenger feels in Economy. But the industry has some ideas.

Today I will be looking at the economics of longhaul Economy Class on twin-aisle aircraft and where emerging technologies might take the industry.

The first section shows how while Economy provides a large amount of capacity, the cabin’s revenue contribution can be limited. Industry best-practicing in configuring a plane’s seat map is to start with all-Economy and only deviate when there is a strong revenue case to do so.

As a result, on longhaul planes with plenty of higher cabin seats Economy’s revenue contribution can be roughly equal to or even less than comfier cabins.

Next, I look at how space per passenger has reduced over the years. Arguably Economy Class as it was in 2010 no longer exists.

Third I comment on recent innovations in the cabin. Finally I highlight the role that data generating seats and galleys will play in the future Economy passenger experience.

How important is Economy to longhaul airlines?

Most travellers fly behind the curtain. On a British Airways Boeing 777-300ER 132 seats (51.6%) are at the back. The same aircraft type as operated by United Airlines has 266 (76.0%) seats in “Coach”.

Even the plushest airlines are economy-heavy. 184 seats (69.7%) of the Singapore Airlines 777-300ER LOPA is Economy. On “five-star” airline Qatar Airways that figure can reach 388 out of 412 (94.2%) on their densest planes.

Even regular comfy class travellers fly in the cheap seats every now and then. British Airways used to offer an “open-doors” lounge access for Gold card holders travelling anywhere on any airline.

The policy was terminated in 2011 thanks to so many Golds, often flying in First and Club World, shuttling around Europe in all-Economy* easyJet.

* I like the idea that every easyJet seat is a First Class seat, as is every seat on Ryanair, London Underground and any bus. But sadly for the sake of this article reality must check-in…

But despite the large number of seats in Economy, it is the comfier seats at the front that drive the largest chunks of revenue for many longhaul airlines.

The chart below shows my estimate of the revenue contribution of each cabin across the worldwide fleet of A380s this summer. I have excluded the A380 owned by Global Airlines. See this article for details of the calculation.

[First Class data is excluded for OZ Asiana]

Across the entire fleet, my model predicts that Economy generates $356 million (£261 million) per week out of $747 million total (47.7%),

On Emirates, which has 53 out of 95 A380 routes, Economy generates $235 million per week (49.8% of the total). On other airlines Economy generates $121 million per week (44.0%).

The range of Economy contribution across each airline’s A380s is wide. On London-based British Airways Economy may only generate around 20.5% of the airline’s revenue on that aircraft type. Across the North Sea, Lufty’s A380s may generate 40.9% of their income from behind the curtain.

Economy on Qantas’s long A380 services to London, Los Angeles and elsewhere comes in at 36.2% because even relatively stingy corporate travel policies often permit Business Class to Australia.

ANA’s “Flying Honu” operate relatively short services from Japan to Hawaii and Economy’s revenue contribution is higher at 59.6%.

Do airlines really ignore Economy Class? They have certainly been busy reducing the available space.

Emirates President Sir Tim Clark reckons airlines are not spending enough time looking at Economy. At this-year’s IATA Conference in Delhi he said, as quoted in The Times:

“Could we make the economy seats a lot more comfortable with more features, functions and products? Yes we could, and I think we have been a bit slow [to do it].

“We did a lot of work in the nineties, reshaping the seat, redesigning the ergonomics, the architecture of the seat, and everything else made them much more comfortable. We were able to take out 50 per cent of their weight and compressed the seat size.

“But after that we stopped. We concentrated on the premium products.”

Emirates with Sir Tim on the leadership team was either the first airline or one of the first airlines to incorporate ten-abreast seating on their Boeing 777s. Now many airlines do it.

Back when Qatar Airways received their first Boeing 777s in 2010 the Economy seats were nine-abreast, which was the industry standard at the time. Sadly for Economy passengers, times have changed

They were 18.4-inches wide with 31-inch pitch and perhaps 29-inches of useable legroom accounting for the thickness of the seat. That gives 533.6-square-inches of useable space.

Today’s Boeing 777s as operated by Qatar Airways, British Airways, Emirates and many others are all ten-abreast. The useable legroom is still roughly 29-inches but the width has reduced from 18.4-inches to around 16.9-inches.

That gives 490.1-square-inches of useable space, a reduction of 8.2%. Seats are designed so that the 95th percentile male can fit in “comfortably enough”. They are also designed so the 5th percentile female will be safely harnessed in a crash.

All or most of the Economy Class space reduction is derived from seat width. This is unfortunate for broad shouldered or overweight travellers.

To make things worse, the aisles are now narrower than they were in 2010 too, so as passengers walk around the cabin they are more likely to bump into others in their seats. This does not just make passengers more uncomfortable, it also slows boarding and reduces turnaround time so airlines can make less use of their aircraft.

The Economy Class which was the industry standard in 2010 and before is no more. What we now call Economy is much less spacious than it used to be.

You could even argue that Economy is a rare example of a successful product that no longer exists.

Recent innovations in the supply chain may disrupt Economy, but I am sceptical about the traction they will get

It is not every day that I get to disagree with Sir Tim Clark. But I do disagree with him today, just a little bit.

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