Originally Posted by
Bucking Bar
I've run some numbers to compare the biggest U.S. carriers, and it reminded me how difficult it is to definitively say who's the biggest.
If you take revenues and expenses, the merged Continental Airlines and United Airlines would be larger than all its U.S. peers.
But if you take fleet, traffic and capacity, Delta Air Lines would be largest.
Here's how it goes by category:
• Operating revenues: The combined United and Continental, at $28.9 billion
• Operating expenses: United-Continental, $29.2 billion
• Operating income: Southwest Airlines, $262 million
• Net income: Southwest Airlines, $99 million
• Full-time equivalent employees: United-Continental, 82,340
• Airplanes flown by the mainline carrier, not regionals: Delta Air Lines, 740
• Revenue passenger miles: Delta, 188.9 billion
• Available seat miles: Delta, 230.3 billion
Source:
AIRLINE BIZ Blog | The Dallas Morning News
This was updated by the author of the article.
Posted by Robert Herbst @ 12:50 PM Mon, May 03, 2010
Investor,
I won't answer for Terry but I will clarify you cannot use the data above for any (credible# airline-to-airline comparisons. Here's why:
The capacity/traffic #RPM's & ASM's) above are for mainline operations -except- DAL which is consolidated with their affiliates.
The revenue/expenses includes mainline -and- affiliate inputs but the employee counts only include the parent company.
In other words, a significant amount of revenue/expenses for some carriers comes from "contracted" regional affiliates/partners.
In order to do analogous comparisons, you must reconcile the differences from mainline and regional capacity purchase agreements.
Robert Herbst
AirlineFinancials.com
From Terry: Bob H. is right on. When I do my monthly traffic charts, I always back out the regional numbers, a particular issue with Delta. It was even more complicated when it reported Delta and Northwest separately but in the same release.
Delta's mainline RPMs in 2009 were 163,706 million and mainline ASMs were 197,723 million.
Delta also shows that $5.29 billion of its revenues came from regional carriers, but doesn't say what part of that came from carriers it doesn't own.
In addition, under expenses Delta lists $3.82 billion in "contract carrier arrangements" and $1.60 billion for "contracted services."
So statistical charts like this simply represent a best effort, and often do not include an apples-to-apples comparison.