Originally Posted by
FriendlyPilot
Easily. You're presumption is that Delta's massive domestic network, premium seats and International routes are all huge money losers somehow and that Delta only makes a bunch of money because AMEX just gifts them $7B a year for doing nothing.
Delta's costs would be much less if they didn't have to fly around $7B in revenue worth of people, bags, etc. At their current profit margin they'd save about $6.1B in costs and so they would only be down $900M in net profit. Still a multi-billion dollar profitable company.
I trust chat gpt and common sense more than friendly pilot from a forum:
Notably, in 2024, Delta’s cost per available seat mile (CASM) exceeded its passenger revenue per available seat mile (PRASM), indicating that the airline incurred losses on its core passenger operations. Despite this, Delta reported an operating profit of $6.0 billion for the year, largely due to the substantial income from its co-branded credit card partnership.
Therefore, without the revenue from its American Express partnership, Delta Air Lines would have faced challenges in achieving profitability in 2024.
https://www.investopedia.com/the-fou...ce=chatgpt.com