creating and destroying; built flying cars & autonomous vehicles, now building /faust, more here: /july, web: july.rocks

And where they really make their money is their airline rewards programs. So much so that their businesses flying people are almost all money losing

1/n Do airlines make a lot from their rewards programs? if so, how much? I got curious (thanks @heavygweit & @jachian) about this and wanted to see. United as an example, (source: recent form 8-K and recent 10-Q forms) first some overview:

Revenue:
- United made $27.5B in the first 6 months of 2024:
- Passenger airline operations revenue: $24.99B constitutes about 90.8% of their revenue 
- Cargo operations Revenue: $805M, ~2.9% of total revenue
- Other revenue (including loyalty program earnings like MileagePlus and the credit card partnerships: $1.5B and about ~6.3% of total revenue

Costs:
- United paid $25.5B in the first 6 months of 2024:
- Salaries and related costs $8.03B (31.5% of revenue)
- Aircraft fuel: 6.09B (this seems to fluctuate the most obviously, 23.7% of total revenue)
- Maintenance & repairs: $1.49B
- D&A: $1.43B

Operating Income: 
- $2.03B in the same time (27.5 - 25.5), total margin is about 7.4%
- Passenger Profit: $2.5B
- Cargo Profit: $805M
- MileagePlus (Credit Card Program) $1.5B

Building Higher apparel at High Line 🧢 
Host at /clickcast /cpg

random facts and life excerpts. vulnerability is strength ✨🌈 building /uno, design & dev

excellent research. united premiere, cc, mileage plus member & previous shareholder here. not b/c i'm bullish on the company, just b/c of the major carrier options surving my airport, they're the top option.

the boeing situation terrifies me, but that's not exclusive to united.

appreciate the deep dive, thx!