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Comment by dgudkov | Hacker News Reader

Not always.

[1] The US Airline Industry is Highly Profitable https://airinsight.com/2016/08/18/us-airline-industry-highly...

[2] The Most Hated U.S. Airline Is Also the Most Profitable https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-10/spirit-ai...

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The first article you sited actually says that airlines are a low margin business. The fact that they've been more profitable than normal, according to your source, has to do with fuel prices driving more volume and saving some overhead, and their efficiency programs. Even with all that, their gross profits are still just in line with an average corporation.

How is it in the long term? There's historically been a major boom and bust component here, with economic downturns or terror attacks taking a major toll.

I've heard it said that, over its history, commercial aviation as a whole has never made money. However, I haven't seen a good source for that and, with consolidation and lower fuel prices, the airline industry has generally done pretty well over the past decade.

American went bankrupt just five years ago, and they're the world's largest airline. US Airways, Northwest, and Delta all went bankrupt just over a decade ago. A lot of smaller ones have also suffered bankruptcy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airline_bankruptcies_i...

If you look at the profits of existing airlines over the past decade then you're suffering from selection bias. You're also looking at a period soon after a bunch of big airlines were able to unload a lot of debt through bankruptcy. Between 9/11 and 2006, five major US airlines went through Chapter 11, so some of their subsequent success is funded by their former creditors. I don't know if any of that overcomes their recent profits or if the industry has become profitable even accounting for those things. It's certainly possible that they've finally figured out how to consistently make money in the long term.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the overall accounting for airline profitability throughout history was still in the red. In addition to the airlines you called out, there's also Pan Am, Eastern, TWA, etc.--as well as the others in your referenced list.

Furthermore, a lot of international carriers have historically been government subsidized.

It certainly hasn't been a great business for most of its history.

Yeah, I didn't want to go too far back, or it starts being less relevant to the present situation. In any case, it will be interesting to see if the cycle repeats again, or if the current players have finally figured it out.

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