You are conflating arguments and cherry picking here to make your point.

Because smaller Airlines don't have scale, their credit cards are not as attractive. The customer then picks the credit card affiliated with an Airline that has a bigger network, more places to go to burn those miles. The Airline then makes a bigger margin selling tickets in miles vs dollars. That margin subsidizes tickets sold in dollars making that Airline more flexible in competing in dollars to smaller Airlines, while remaining profitable.

The smaller network Airline does not have quite that......you know Friendly, I'm not going to continue with the explanation. I think based on your posts, you know where I'm going with this.

So yes, one can say "isn't profitable" and "profitable" in the same sentence as long as there is an explanation of what they mean, context. Yes, SCALE is important and makes a lot of differences. But you purposely throw words together in a way to make it sound stupid, knowing very well what is meant when someone says that.

Overall, it would be a different ball game if credit cards weren't in the mix. Most likely more consolidations years ago, but this is the current market so compete or go away is game.