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Considering Germany is thinking about implementing new taxes to increase costs for commercial flights due to how cheap flights have become and the pollution they produce, I was thinking how much does running an airliner actually cost.

I've seen flights from Germany to Mallorca for less than 20 € and even if those are just a few seats and with next to no service, I was wondering, how much does a flight like that acutally cost. - Including fuel, all fees, the crew (average wages), maintainance cycles and if possible the aircraft purchase price itself.

For example, if an aircraft does 6 two hour flights a day and cost an initial 108 million € for an A320neo, assuming a 30 years lifetime and a resell value of maybe 30 million after that (is that realistic?) that would average the cost of the aircraft itself at roughly 7200 € per day or 1200 € per flight.

Regardless of airlines themselves, what are the ballpark values for all costs (fuel, crew, aircraft, fees, anything I didn't think about...) of an airliner per flight (for the sake of the argument assuming A320neo on short distance fligths, e.g. 2hrs)?

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  • $\begingroup$ That question was rather for long distance flights and I was thinking more about the short distance flights that acutally led politics to think about new taxes because these seem to get cheaper and cheaper. - My neighbours even took a flight to Morroco for what was basically an "afternoon coffee", just because it only cost them 28€ (including return flight)! $\endgroup$ – Adwaenyth Jul 18 '19 at 11:37
  • $\begingroup$ You can still scale the answer to that question to your needs. The fuel burn for an A320 is easily found online; amortization you already calculated; crew cost will be somewhat cheaper on short hauls, but not much; the rest is the same. $\endgroup$ – Bianfable Jul 18 '19 at 11:51
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    $\begingroup$ Airlines go by cost per available seat mile with wide variations; here is data for the US.statista.com/statistics/527881/… Taxing success purely to punish it seems to be a counterproductive strategy for promoting public welfare. $\endgroup$ – John K Jul 18 '19 at 12:55