Starting on April 1st, you can get a more pleasant dining experience thanks to a new line of in-flight tableware due to Delta and Alessi's partnership.
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Delta carries more than 180 million passengers a year, but only some 25 million will have occasion to lift one of Alessi’s strategically weighted wine glasses to their lips. Why invest in a fancy new line of serviceware that most of your customers will never use?
Simple: Airlines make more money off the premium cabins than the cheap seats. The business of flying is the difference between Revenue per Available Seat Mile—RASM—and Cost per Available Seat Mile, or CASM. “RASM in the front, CASM in the back,” says aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia. “Basically, if your CASM is higher than your RASM you lose. Vice versa, you survive. You can even make money.” You maximize RASM on the seats at the front of the plane, so the blankets in first class feel like blankets; cut CASM in economy, where the blankets feel like something you peeled off a dryer’s lint screen.