Aircraft technical and economic evaluation is a process required specific skills and understanding. New fleets are selected based on a variety of factors; aircraft performance, fuel consumption, availability, price, ability to finance, passenger comfort, inherent technology, payload range etc.

The difficulty in selecting the right type is that, inevitably, an aircraft that wins on some of these variants will lose on others. An objective comparative analysis is required to find the most appropriate answer to your specific question. This analysis will include both economic and non-economic factors.

As aircraft evaluation tends to be carried out on an infrequent basis, often airlines just do not have these skills in-house.