Comment by xattt
3 hours ago
> flying people places doesn't make enough money
Does it not make enough money for viability, or does it not make enough money for sociopath types in C-suites?
If it’s the latter, there will never be enough money for them and will keep pushing increasingly absurd customer-milking initiatives.
There's not a single major US airline that is profitable on charging passengers for tickets and flying them to destinations.
United is the closest, with only a 0.04¢ loss on every seat mile.[1] the other airlines lose 1-2¢/mile.
The jets are a loss leader for credit cards.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-airlines-lost-money-flyin...
[1] There's two metrics airlines report: Cost per Available Seat Mile and Passenger Revenue per Available Seat Mile.
This is the cost/revenue for flying a seat, which may or may not be occupied by a person, to a destination. If the seat is empty it gets $0 in revenue but still costs money.
You can calculate the profit made from selling tickets per seat mile by PRASM - CASM.