Montt - I agree with you about overall costs per seat favouring new (expensive) aircraft once a certain threshold of utilisation has been reached (usually around 300 hours).
However, with the cheap aircraft, you can afford to buy or lease several for the cost of one new aircraft. This means you can operate a number of flights at the same time to different destinations carrying multiples of passengers - something you can't do with a single aircraft.
In addition, the older aircraft have much lower guaranteed monthly utilisation requirements - our business plan for the L1011s called for 150 - 200!
Donkey Duke - try reading my last post again, s l o w l y this time. I'm sure you'll get it.
Eventually.
