I've looked at a recent article which includes estimates of Cost-per-available-seat-kilometre (CASK) figures for some LCCs in Europe.
https://www.gridpoint.consulting/blo...-european-lccs
I know this is back-of-the-envelope stuff, but if I take the distance in miles between 2 airports, multiply by 1.624 to get kilometres, multiply by between 0.04 and 0.07, and divide by 1.13 to go from euros to pounds, I regularly seem to get a number far higher than the base fare. Even allowing for maybe 40 euros per person each way in ancillaries, this still shows a lot of flights being sold under the cost price. Yes, there are all kinds of other things to take into account, but the apparent costs-are-more-than-revenues aspect seems puzzling.
An example is London to Cyprus being offered for under £20 in January. Offering this on just 1 date might be to allow marketing to make big claims... but doing this on many dates seems surprising
What am I missing ?