How Much Do Airlines Make per Flight? Revenue and Net Profit per Departure of US Airlines from BTS Financial and T-100 Data, Company Annual Reports and IATA Industry Estimates, 2014–2026

Airlines do not publish revenue or profit per flight. We at Travel Statistics Bureau construct both for US domestic flying by dividing the domestic operating revenue and after-tax net income that US scheduled passenger airlines report to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) by the domestic departures of the same airlines, matched carrier by carrier in the BTS T-100 segment data. In 2025 these airlines took in $187.8 billion across 7,838,856 domestic departures, or $23,958 per flight, and kept $3.2 billion, or about $408 per flight ($402–$415 given the rounding of the published total), 1.7% of revenue. Profit per flight was 71% below the $1,418 of 2019 and far below the 2015 peak of $2,506; in 2020 the average domestic flight lost $5,937. Revenue per flight, by contrast, has stayed above $23,000 since 2022. Industry operating revenue rose 28.7% between 2019 and 2025 while labour cost reached $91.2 billion, 37.8% of operating expenses and 1.84 times its 2016 level. Company annual reports give comparable figures for three groups that count their own flights: Southwest earned $311 per trip in 2025 against $1,682 in 2019, Alaska’s group $184 per departure, and Allegiant’s parent company lost $326 per departure, largely through resort charges. Dividing the International Air Transport Association’s worldwide net profit by its flight count gives about $1,157 per flight in 2025 and $594 in the 2026 forecast, when Middle East airlines are expected to move from $31.50 of profit per passenger to a loss of $21.40. All inputs are public.