United Flies Farther, Delta Banks the Most, And Star Alliance Tops Worldwide Revenue – Breaking Down The Numbers – View from the Wing

United Airlines flies the most seat miles – they fly a lot of widebodies great distances around the world. Delta Air Lines produces the most revenue. They get paid.

Jay Sorensen’s IdeaWorks “2024 Big Book of Airline Data” is out and it looks at numbers from airlines all over the world. That takes time to get reported out, so we’re looking at 2023 numbers. But here are the airlines with the most revenue:

Credit: IdeaWorks

American Airlines, though, flies the most passengers. Of course it’s El Paso to Dallas, Charlotte to Savannah and Phoenix to Reno. Internationally, their focus is flying to their closest partners’ hubs, and adding in seasonal summer flights to Europe.

Credit: IdeaWorks

Fiji Airways carried just 2.2 million passengers in 2023, which is fewer than Starlux and Breeze. EgyptAir carried just 2.8 million passengers – they seem larger because of their Star Alliance membership and flights to the United States. They actually carried fewer passengers than Wideroe and fewer than Bangkok Airways.

At 5 million passengers, Kenya Airways carried less traffic than El Al and Pakistan International Airlines. Finnair, EVA Air, and Thai each carried around 10 million. So did LOT Polish. That’s only a quarter the number of passengers that Alaska and Spirit each carried.

Unsurprisingly, Star Alliance generates more revenue than the other global alliances – about 40% more. I did not realize that oneworld and SkyTeam were so close – less than $650 million apart for 2023 – with both coming in at around $154 billion.

Sorensen also does some interesting things with the data. Here’s revenue per employee for the top 10 airlines. The average for 105 airlines disclosing revenue and employee numbers was $463,337. Of course some airlines outsource a lot of their work, that lowers the denominator and drives up their number.

Google employees generate $1.67 million per employee. At Facebook it’s $2 million, and Apple 20% over that. But did you know that the average airline employee generates revenue that’s not far off of Mastercard? Airlines generate a lot of revenue… but their margins aren’t great.