Airport operating losses are bigger than their profits

Published October 2026

I'd read that there is an airport called Heathrow and it sells limited edition thingies and last-minute items. Perhaps it's related; maybe not. It seems that Heathrow's staple revenue comes from card partnerships.

This one is slightly different, but the gist is airlines are managing to survive not because of selling seats but rather the loyalty programs they've launched.

Their operational loss is almost equal to their profits from flight revenue. For example, Delta Air Lines had a revenue of ~$6B USD and a loss of ~$5B USD.

See chart. As a solution, loyalty programs with card companies have popped up in the last decade. In essence:

1. Delta Air Lines partners with American Express to create a YX card.
2. Amex gives ~$2B USD in advance to Delta Air Lines, solving their cash flow issue.
3. Now, Amex has a very compelling reason for customers to choose the YX card instead of Visa, Mastercard, or PayPal.
4. Cards, or transactional volume, is the core business of any card company; therefore, the deals are attractive for them as well.
5. Now, a rich customer, or any customer, chooses the YX card, giving Amex data to leverage, ~2% transaction fees, and the network effect -> the more customers get those cards, the more they increase; and once they have 30K miles on their cards, they have no other option than to stay LOYAL.

During the Corona quarantine as well, airlines used their loyalty programs as collateral for emergency loans. Recently Delta got ~$2B USD from Amex and Chase sent somewhere around $800M USD to United, driving home the importance of loyalty programs in the survival of airline giants.