How thin are airline margins?

Airlines primarily plan operations around breakeven with one or two percent profit margins. The required seat factor to achieve breakeven is around 78% and average seat factor is around 80%. This holds good for majority of the profit making airlines.



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A large part of an airline's profitability depends on the routes it flies. Even at a time when profits have been under pressure, some routes will still earn airlines hundreds of millions of dollars, with the most lucrative route in the world being worth over $1 billion, according to Forbes.

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The most profitable passenger airline in North America in 2022 was Delta Air Lines, with operating revenue of almost 50.6 billion U.S. dollars, followed closely by American Airlines, with nearly 49 billion U.S. dollars in revenue.

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Airline passenger yield is generally expressed as the number of cents (or equivalent) earned for each passenger mile or kilometer flown.

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In 2022, airline net losses are expected to be $6.9 billion (an improvement on the $9.7 billion loss for 2022 in IATA's June outlook). This is significantly better than losses of $42.0 billion and $137.7 billion that were realized in 2021 and 2020 respectively.

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