Not really.

This is because the person that wrote this article doesn't understand CASM and RASM, how they are reported and what they actually are.

CASM include fuel, a large expense. But almost every flight on Delta and United have cargo. United alone carried 1.3B pounds of cargo in 2024. It made $1.7B in cargo revenue. Moving cargo is not free. There is labor involved as well as extra fuel costs. These fuel costs are rolled into CASM, because ALL fuel affects CASM. Cargo revenue is NOT part of RASM. Its a separate line item WITHOUT an associated fuel cost.

Delta reports cargo revenue in the same fashion, with excess fuel costs fully included in passenger CASM, since the cargo is also on the plane with the passengers.

Guess what else? United and Delta also have fuel costs to carry ALL those people that redeemed credit card miles. So the costs are rolled into CASM, but the credit card revenue is NOT included in PRASM. That's part of a separate income statement item called "other revenue".

Without cargo revenue AND without credit card revenue, both United and Delta would have MUCH lower CASM because they would not be burning all this extra fuel. To put in perspective United carried 1.3B pounds of cargo in 2024. It costs a ton of gas to carry 1.3B pounds an average stage length of 2,500 nm, which is where most of the cargo revenue is on International Flights.

So without cargo revenue (which the fuel costs are mixed in with passenger CASMs) and then without credit card revenue (also which ALL fuel costs are calculated in with passenger CASM), both Delta and United would have far less costs.

Yes cargo and credit card revenue is substantial, but the costs are also substantial and unless you understand how airlines report the costs, they are not fully activity based for GAAP purposes, which would be more intuitive if they were.

Credit card companies are not just throwing a bunch of money at airlines. There is a cost to all of it that would go away if the revenue went away almost proportionally.. Same with cargo.