Question

Airline united american jetblue southwest cost per 1,000 miles () 181 197 123 134 suppose that, on a 3,000-mile new york to los angeles flight, united, american, and southwest flew a total of 230 empty seats, costing them a total of 120,000. If united had three times as many empty seats as american, how many empty seats did each of these three airlines carry on its flight?

Answer 1

To find the number of empty seats carried by each airline, we can set up a system of equations and solve for the unknowns.

Step-by-step explanation:

To solve this problem, we will set up a system of equations based on the given information and solve for the number of empty seats each airline carried on its flight.

1. Let x be the number of empty seats carried by American.
2. Then, United had 3 times the number of empty seats, so United had 3x empty seats.
3. Southwest had 230 - (x + 3x) = 230 - 4x empty seats.
4. We can now write the equation: 181(3x) + 197x + 123(230 - 4x) = 120,000, where the left side represents the cost of the empty seats for each airline and the right side represents the total cost.
5. Solving this equation will give us the value of x, which represents the number of empty seats carried by American.
6. Once we have x, we can calculate the number of empty seats carried by United (3x) and Southwest (230 - 4x).