How to Calculate the Yield on Air Fares

The yield tells airlines how much they are making on each filled seat per mile on any given flight. This number, which is the result of crunching a few other numbers, determines whether an airline is profitable. You, the passenger, can calculate how much money you are making for the airline by multiplying the yield by the number of miles you've flown. In 2003, when MSNBC produced an informative story on airline revenues and belt-tightening, the average yield for most U.S. airlines was between 11 and 12 cents, although the differences in cost of operations between airlines made some profitable while others ended at a loss with those numbers.

Things You'll Need

• Available seats per route
• Miles per route
• Number of filled seats

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Instructions

1. • 1

     Add up all of the available seats on a certain route with one carrier: Boston to Chicago, for example.

   • 2

     Multiply this by the number of miles on that Boston to Chicago route and you'll come up with the number of Available Seat Miles (ASM).

   • 3

     Multiply the number of seats filled on that Boston to Chicago route every day by the number of miles on the route for the total Revenue Passenger Miles (RPM).

   • 4

     Divide the ASM by the RPM to discover the yield, or the revenue, that an airline makes on each mile it flies on this Boston to Chicago route.