If a 5th cabin crew member will make the B757 operation uneconomical then it was pretty marginal already.
I expect that the cost of new cabin crew are sub 25K per annum. So thats 40 crew x 24K, 1 million euro......a lot of cash.
But not when you divide it by 3 B757's operating perhaps 4-5 round trips per week. Lets call it 4 per aircraft.....12x52=624 round trips.....at lets say 6 J class and 100 Y class pax (I expect EI would want a lot more than that)...... that a yearly total of 3744 J/ 62,400 Y. Purely on numbers rather than ticket fares we get approx a cost of 15 Euro per pax to have those 40 crew hired for the B757. And with a full flight the cost per pax goes down even further.
US carriers have 6 crew, Icelandair who operate shorter routes to the USA have 5 crew. Anyone know how many Thompson have on their B757? (EDIT-Thks TSR2 for the info that Thompson have 200+ pax)
EI are going to have 4....what happens when a flight deck member has to come out to the toilet? The crew member in J class will then have to go into the cockpit.....is J class unattended? What happens if a pax gets sick....does the service stop?
I can't see J class pax jumping ship from UA/DL/US to EI with a less customer focused J class service. My last time on UA it looked as if they had 2 serving J with 4 in Y. So does this mean EI will have 2 crew serving 170 in Y Class
Referring to the comment "EY standards not needed ex-SNN"....if EI upgrade their J Class service it will across the board, not just ex-DUB and not just on their A330's. While the seats may be different on the B757 they will have to offer the same actual service levels.
And I can't see the service being too short on the Eastbound night flights.....it may well take the whole journey BOS-SNN....I think I'll make sure to pack my earplugs and eyemask on those flights.....
For arguments sake I just looked at fares: 20th Jan, SNN-BOS with BOS-SNN on the 24th;590 Euros in Y, 1997 Euros in J Class.
Last edited by DollarBill; 8th Oct 2013 at 07:23.