The American airline industry is a highly competitive yet heavily regulated battlefield where no company by design can ever capture majority market share.
No airline has greater than a 18% market share in the U.S and any M&A deal that would bring that number to 20% or higher is automatically blocked by the Justice Department.
Yet while the customer experience has not changed, American airlines have gone through an often-overlooked evolution in the past decade.
It was only 10 years ago when newer low-cost airlines like Southwest and JetBlue were celebrated as innovators disrupting dominant legacy carriers like Delta and United.
They had elevated product and value with extraordinarily cheap fares and unprecedented free amenities like free checked baggage, extra legroom, and self-assigned seating.
Americans voted with their wallets and flocked to these no-frills low-cost carriers where the experience was comparable and the price consistently lower.
The airline industry is a straightforward, capital-intensive business where volume and scale is everything.
The more planes, the more seats, the more passengers, the more trips, and the more money you can make.
When we were to rank all American airlines based on gross earnings, the carriers that make the most money are the ones with the largest fleets - and those with the least amount of revenue have the smallest fleets.
Like cruise ships, passenger aircraft are expensive assets that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and built only by a few suppliers in the world, and must be ordered years in advance.
