Problem:
Because of the opportunities created for competition by the merger between Air Canada and Canadian Airlines, East-West Air is about to introduce a daily round-trip flight on the Toronto-to-Vancouver route. East-West Air offers only one class of seats, Comfort Class, which provides more leg room, on all its flights. No other airline offers this kind of seat. East-West is in the process of determining how it should price its round-trip tickets. The following information is available:
Seating capacity per plane 360
Maximum expected demand for seats on any flight 300
Food and beverage service cost for a round trip
(no additional charge to passenger) $40/passenger
Commission to travel agents paid by East-West on each ticket
(assume all tickets are booked by travel agents) 8% of fare
Fuel costs for a round-trip flight $24,000
Fixed annual lease costs allocated to a round-trip flight $100,000
Fixed ground-services costs (maintenance, check-in, baggage handling)
allocated to a round-trip flight $10,000
Fixed flight crew salaries allocated to a round-trip flight $8,000
For simplicity, assume that fuel costs are not affected by the actual number of passengers on a flight.
The market research group at East-West segments the market into business travellers and pleasure travellers and provides the following information on the effect of different price levels on the estimated demand for seats on any given flight:
Price Number of Seats
Charged Expected to be Sold
Business travellers $500 200
$2,000 190
Pleasure travellers $500 100
$2,000 20
Assume these prices are the only choices available to East-West. The market research team offers one additional piece of information: Pleasure travellers usually begin their travels in one week, spend at least a weekend at their destination, and return in a following week. Business travellers usually begin and complete their travels within the same week and do not stay over a weekend.
Question:- What is the breakeven volume for each type of passenger on a given return flight, if you assume that the fare is $2000 and that the sales mix of 190 business passengers to 20 pleasure travellers is maintained?