You cannot possibly know that without knowing the operational lifetime of a plane and it's expected return. An airline doesn't buy a plane planning to break even on the purchase cost, for example.

Which basically proves my original point.

Do you not understand what the word manufacture means?

It literally doesn’t matter what the “operational lifetime” or “expected return” is if it costs 200% more to manufacture for only 2% improvements.

It won’t ever get far enough in the design process for it to even be an issue.

Setting aside that you pulled that number out of your ass to argue against it, if something produces 400X it's purchase cost over it's operational life time, a 2% improvement takes that to 408X it's purchase cost for only a 2X increase in initial outlay, meaning it pays for itself 4 fold.

But very few innovations have that sort of effect on manufacturing cost to start with.

This doesn’t make sense as a reply.

How is your own opinion, on another user’s example number, even relevant enough to be “setting aside” in the first place?