United Airlines Ranks Last in U.S. Airline Profits

Frankfurt, Germany - July 17, 2014: United Airlines aircraft logo at an aircraft in Frankfurt. United Airlines is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo: iStock)

In the annual Global Earnings Scorecard list of profitable airlines across the world, United is America’s least profitable.

On January 9, trade publication Airline Weekly released its annual Global Earnings Scorecard, a list of 72 airlines across the world ranked by profit. Numbers were tabulated from September 2015 to September 2016, and the list shows some surprising results.

Three of the four topping the list for most profitable are ultra low-cost airlines: Allegiant, Ryanair, and Spirit. Out of the U.S. airlines included in the list, Chicago-based United took last place with an operating margin of 14 percent. It was, though, relatively high on the overall list, coming in at number 22 in the ranking.

Allegiant took the top spot on the list with a 30 percent operating margin, and Ryanair followed closely behind at 23 percent. Third most profitable was Alaska Airlines, and Spirit Airlines followed in fourth, both also at 23 percent operating margins. Southwest closed out the top five with 21 percent.

For other U.S. airlines, JetBlue took sixth place with 20 percent operating margins; Hawaiian Airlines’ 19 percent put it in tenth place; Delta came in 12th with 18 percent, and American took 15th with a 16 percent operating margin.

Seth Kaplan, Airline Weekly’s managing partner, noted that U.S.-based airlines tend to have higher profits overall than international carriers, but also said that this year’s study is an uptick from the last decade of results, when most American airlines were in bankruptcy at some point. Next year’s results may be even more of a drastic change, as legacy airlines are beginning to offer super-low fare options to compete with the low-cost carriers.

[Photo: Getty Images]