American, Delta and United collectively generated over $170 billion in revenue in 2025. Yet for every dollar that comes in, airlines keep just four cents in profit. Understanding how the other 96 cents gets consumed explains why the airline business remains, as Warren Buffett put it, "the worst sort of business … one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money." Here is how a single dollar of airline revenue gets