Meet Atlántico Airways

building the airline that the entire cost series is built on

What does it actually cost to run an airline? Not a vague sense that flying is expensive, but the real figure, line by line, in a form you could build a business plan from.

That is the question this series answers. Before we can answer it, we have to do something most “airline costs explained” articles never bother with. We have to build the airline first. You cannot take a machine apart until you know exactly what machine you are looking at, so this module specifies our worked example in full and locks the assumptions that every later figure depends on. Everything that follows in the series rests on what is set out here.

Atlántico is not real. Every number attached to it is.

The airline is called Atlántico Airways. It is not real. Every number attached to it is. Its fleet, its routes, its utilisation, its salaries and its charges are all built from current regulations, current market rates, and real-world operating benchmarks. When a later post says a captain costs a certain amount or the maintenance bill runs to a certain figure, the reason it holds up is that the assumptions behind it are written down here.

What kind of airline this is

Atlántico Airways is a mid-sized European hybrid carrier, based in Madrid, running a mixed narrowbody and widebody fleet. It is neither a pure low-cost carrier nor a full legacy network airline. It sits in the gap that Spanish geography rewards: a short-haul European and domestic feeder operation funnelling traffic into Madrid-Barajas, combined with a widebody operation pushing across the Atlantic to Latin America and down into North Africa.

This model is real and proven. It mirrors the operating shape of carriers such as Air Europa, a scaled-up Iberia Express, or a Volotea-style operation with widebodies added. The defining feature for cost purposes is that Atlántico is large enough to require every regulated function a full airline needs, its own Air Operator Certificate, its own continuing airworthiness organisation, a round-the-clock operations centre, and the full set of mandatory postholders, while remaining small enough that every cost decision is visible on a single profit and loss account. There is nowhere for a number to hide.

The fleet

Atlántico operates fifteen aircraft in two types.

The short-haul fleet is ten Airbus A321neo, each in a 220-seat two-class layout, averaging four years of age, with a maximum take-off weight of 93.5 tonnes. The A321neo is the most capable current-generation single-aisle aircraft and the natural workhorse for dense European and domestic flying. The 220-seat figure is a credible two-class configuration, since real Iberia A321s run 220 seats and the type certificate permits anywhere from 180 to 244. A four-year average age reflects a recently built single-aisle fleet.

The long and medium-haul fleet is five Airbus A330-300, each in a 290-seat two-class layout, averaging nine years of age, with a maximum take-off weight of 233 tonnes. The A330-300 is a proven, widely available widebody whose mid-life lease economics are far more favourable than a new-generation A330neo or Boeing 787, which suits a cost-disciplined hybrid carrier. The 290-seat layout is standard two-class, since real Iberia and Air Europa A330-300s run between 288 and 320 seats depending on premium cabin size. The nine-year average age reflects mid-life aircraft, because A330-300 production ended in 2020, so any example flying today is at least five years old. That age profile drives the maintenance and lease assumptions later in the series.

Base and network

The hub is Madrid-Barajas, Spain’s natural transatlantic gateway and the home base of every major Spanish long-haul operator. The geographic advantage is real. Madrid is roughly ninety minutes closer to Latin America than a Northern European hub, which is the structural reason Iberia, Air Europa and Level all base their Americas operations there.

The short-haul A321neo network is a European and domestic feeder web from Madrid. On the international side it reaches London, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Amsterdam, Lisbon and Rome. On the domestic backbone it serves Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia, Málaga, Seville, Gran Canaria and Tenerife. Frequency is high on the trunk routes and once or twice daily on the thinner ones.

The long and medium-haul A330-300 network carries the transatlantic and medium-haul flying. Latin America is the spine, with Bogotá, Lima, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Mexico City and Havana, plus a New York rotation and a daily Miami. North Africa fills the medium-haul widebody slots with Casablanca and Dakar. Every one of these is a route genuinely operated from Madrid today.

How hard the aircraft are flown

Utilisation is the engine of the whole model, because it drives both revenue capacity and cost consumption.

Each A321neo flies around five sectors a day, with an average block time of roughly one hour thirty per sector. That works out at about seven and a half block hours a day, and approximately 2,600 block hours a year per aircraft.

Each A330-300 flies around two sectors a day, with an average block time of roughly five hours per sector, giving about ten block hours a day and approximately 3,400 block hours a year per aircraft.

The two-sectors-a-day widebody figure needs a caveat, because it is achievable only as a fleet average across mixed routing. True long-haul to Latin America is a single long sector followed by a layover, averaging close to one sector per aircraft per day. Medium-haul widebody flying to North Africa or on shorter routes runs two to three sectors a day. Blended across five aircraft, this averages out to roughly two sectors a day. That is the realistic way a small widebody fleet is actually flown, and it matters because it determines crew patterns, fuel burn and maintenance consumption.

Across the year, aircraft are assumed available for around 340 to 350 days, with the remainder absorbed by scheduled maintenance, repositioning and weather. That is a standard industry availability assumption.

Load factor

The model assumes an 80% load factor. European narrowbody load factors typically run 80 to 85%, and transatlantic widebody between 82 and 87%, so an 80% blended assumption is deliberately conservative. That keeps the traffic and revenue outputs credible rather than optimistic, and it sits squarely within the range real-world financial modelling uses for a stable European carrier.

How the traffic numbers reconcile

This is where fleet, utilisation and load factor combine into the headline numbers, and every figure ties back to the assumptions above.

On sectors, the ten A321neo fly around 1,700 sectors each a year, giving 17,000 sectors. The five A330-300 fly around 680 sectors each, giving 3,400. The total is roughly 20,400 sectors a year, which is about 1,700 flights a month.

On block hours, the A321neo fleet generates around 26,000 and the A330-300 fleet around 17,000, for a total of approximately 43,000 block hours a year.

On passengers, the A321neo carry 17,000 sectors at 220 seats and 80% load, which is about 2.99 million. The A330-300 carry 3,400 sectors at 290 seats and 80% load, which is about 0.79 million. The total is roughly 3.8 million passengers a year.

The cross-checks confirm the model holds together. Passengers per flight come out at 3.8 million divided by 20,400, which is about 186, consistent with the seat mix and load factor. Flights per aircraft per day come out at 1,700 a month across fifteen aircraft, which is about 3.8, a realistic mixed-fleet utilisation rate. These numbers reconcile internally, which is the real test of a sound baseline. You cannot move one without moving the others.

What is in-house and what is outsourced

This is a critical set of assumptions, because it determines which costs are headcount and which are contracts, and it shapes every topic in the series.

Atlántico keeps in-house its Air Operator Certificate and all nominated postholders, its Flight Operations and Cabin Operations, its continuing airworthiness organisation and maintenance planning, its line maintenance at the main base and selected line stations, its round-the-clock Operations Control Centre, and its commercial, planning, safety, quality, finance, human resources and IT core functions.

It outsources its heavy maintenance, meaning C-checks, structural work and engine shop visits, to an approved Part-145 maintenance organisation. Atlántico holds the airworthiness responsibility through its own continuing airworthiness organisation, but does not perform heavy work itself. It also outsources ground handling at every station, supervised by Atlántico station managers at the busiest outstations, along with catering, bought in according to the service model, and simulators, leased by the hour rather than owned, since a full-flight simulator only justifies ownership above a larger fleet size.

For an airline outsourcing heavy maintenance and outstation handling, a lean in-house core of around 150 corporate and operational staff is realistic, and comfortably accommodates a 24/7 operations centre, headquarters functions and the mandatory nominated postholders.

The regulatory environment

Atlántico is a Spanish operator, so its framework is European, enforced nationally.

Air operations are governed by Regulation (EU) 965/2012, with organisational requirements under Part-ORO and flight time limitations under the ORO.FTL subpart, as amended by Regulation (EU) 83/2014. Aircrew licensing falls under Regulation (EU) 1178/2011, covering Part-FCL for licences and Part-MED for medical certification. Continuing airworthiness is governed by Regulation (EU) 1321/2014, covering Part-CAMO for airworthiness management and Part-145 for the physical maintenance, with maintenance engineers licensed under Part-66 in the B1 mechanical and B2 avionics categories. Cabin crew requirements sit under the ORO.CC rules, including the one-cabin-crew-per-fifty-passenger-seats minimum.

The competent authority is AESA, the Agencia Estatal de Seguridad Aérea, the Spanish national authority that issues the Air Operator Certificate and enforces the European framework. Where the series compares jurisdictions, the reference regulators are ICAO for the global framework under Annexes 1 and 6, the FAA under 14 CFR Parts 117, 121 and 61, and the UK CAA under its retained European regulations plus the UK Working Time Regulations.

The financial headline

Atlántico’s total annual operating cost is around €480 million. Spread across roughly 3.8 million passengers, that is a cost per passenger of about €126. The airline employs around 870 staff, which is approximately 58 per aircraft. It flies about 43,000 block hours and 20,400 sectors a year.

These benchmarks validate against the real world. The €126 cost per passenger is financially sound for a network that blends long-haul widebody flying, which lifts cost per passenger above pure short-haul low-cost levels, with efficient narrowbody feeding. The 58 staff per aircraft sits exactly where a mixed-fleet hybrid should, well above a pure low-cost narrowbody operation such as Ryanair at around 35 per aircraft, and well below a full legacy carrier with extensive in-house functions such as Iberia at around 110 to 130 per aircraft. The figure reflects the outsourcing of heavy maintenance and ground handling.

The headcount in summary

The staff base that the rest of the series will detail and cost breaks down into four groups. There are 181 flight crew, meaning pilots. There are 543 cabin crew. There are 157 in engineering, line maintenance and continuing airworthiness. There are 150 in operations, commercial and corporate functions. Together that is around 870 people.

Every one of these figures will be derived from first principles in its own module, showing the regulation that forces it, the calculation that sizes it, and the cost that results. That is the promise of this series. Not a chart, not a summary, but the full books of a working airline, opened one line at a time, until nothing is left unexplained.

What comes next

With the airline built and the assumptions locked, the series now works through the cost base topic by topic, week by week. The first topic is flight crew. We start with the regulatory requirement that dictates who must be on the flight deck and how much they may legally fly, then build the pilot establishment from first principles, then cost it in full. That is post 1.1, and it is where the real numbers begin.

About OAT

This series is produced by OAT. We build technically rigorous aviation training, designed by people who have worked the operation rather than just written about it.

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