Our airline customers purchase them from a number of different vendors and have us install them," a spokesperson for Boeing said in an email. A case in point: airplane bathrooms, called lavatories. The same applies to avionics, tires, windows, galley carts, ovens, Wi-Fi and in-flight entertainment, and all manner of other pieces. Composite-material wings are made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan and GKN in the UK, among others. Jet engines are made by General Electric, Rolls Royce and Pratt & Whitney. In each case, Boeing and Airbus are assembling aircraft whose parts come from an extensive global supply chain. "In other words, it really does cost more to design and manufacture an airplane seat, but then the firms benefit from a certain amount of pricing power."īut aren't Boeing or Airbus manufacturing the whole plane?
"The reason why an airplane seat costs exponentially more than a chair in your living room is because the chair in your living room doesn't have to be certified by the FAA and then manufactured according to very strict specifications, and then there are many dozens of suppliers of living-room chairs competing for your business, whereas there are only a few suppliers of airplane seats for each cabin," Kaplan said. "It's the safety compliance requirements and the limited number of firms in the space for any given part - that is, the lack of competition," he said. There are two factors that jump up the costs of airline parts, according to Seth Kaplan, an airline industry expert and TPG contributor. Boeing, for example, has downselected the number of options available for the Boeing 787 for efficiency" he said, noting the list of options is still very extensive. "Most items such as landing gear, wheels, lavatories and standard avionics won't be broken out by line item.
"When an airline buys a plane, they start with the list price and a standard set of components and features," said John Mowry, Managing Director of Alton Aviation Consultancy, a global aviation consulting firm with expertise in aircraft leasing, maintenance, repair and operation.
For example: Boeing says a 737 MAX 8 costs $121.6 million at list price, but when you're an airline that buys 200 of them in one go - and gives Boeing a huge image boost in the process - you are sure to get a fat discount. It wasn't easy the prices for everything from galley carts to jet engines are closely guarded in the industry and are usually wrapped into the list prices for commercial aircraft, which are only indicative themselves. We spoke with industry experts and manufacturers, and performed some detective work, to uncover some of these costs. From the amenity kit you are handed when you fly in a premium class ($4 and up) to the fanciest first-class seats that are actually suites (a million bucks a pop, give or take), the airlines make hundreds of purchasing decisions before their new aircraft even enter service. But, like every car owner knows, just because you bought it doesn't mean you're done paying for it: parts and accessories are expensive, sometimes surprisingly so. Even the smallest member of the 787 Dreamliner family can set you back a quarter of a billion dollars, per the published Boeing price list below.
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