I can see you just plucked that figure from thin air, thats absurd..... No way it costs $500million a year
Try doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations yourself. Here are mine:
$10K per hour operating costs for the "average" FIFO aircraft;
5 hours average round trip time;
1 round trip per day, 310 days per year;
16 flights out of YPPH in the morning and 16 in the afternoon, gives:
(16 + 16) x 310 x 5 x $10K = $496 million.
Of course, my figures (especially the 32 trips per day) are probably a little on the conservative side. And, I haven't allowed for profits on top of the base costs, nor the administrative and infrastructure costs directly attributable to FIFO.
Skystar320,
How much do you think FIFO costs the mining industry per year? And, can you show us your back-of-the-envelope calculations?