Originally Posted by Sunvox

Here are the basic expense statements from the 2017 annual reports. Notice salaries and rents/fees. (Delta is in blue.) Assuming for the moment the two companies are accounting for the same item in the same way, it looks to me like we have over a $1 billion dollar structural difference in expense that we will never overcome.

Interesting to note that the two companies account for regional partner costs in different ways making honest comparison difficult.