The economic advantage is derived from what is known as “density economies”, or a “frequency advantage”.

Several factors boost the profitability of operations:

• Unit revenues have improved thanks to more business travellers, attracted by the quality of services offered (non-stop flights and more frequencies).
• Large traffic flows are fed by small traffic flows, leading to the operation of bigger aircraft, which are more cost-efficient. The gap between the cost per seat between the A330 and the A380, which will join the fleet in 2008, is almost 30%!
• The hub system makes it possible, for each flight, to combine connecting traffic and point-to-point traffic.  As a result, traffic flows are bigger, allowing Air France to increase the number of flights to any given destination. As soon as a carrier offers a number of flights that is greater than half of all flights offered by all the airlines flying to this destination, it becomes more attractive than its competitors, thus improving load factor and market share.