3 times per year x 10,000,000 Kettles = 30,000,000 Kettle trips per year. And that's just for Pa. If Ma goes along on those three trips, double that total to 60,000,000. And if the little teapots go too...well, you get the picture.
I neither doubt nor dispute your math. Just allow me to add mine.
If there are 100 kettles for every Plat equivalent, then by your math, there might be 100,000 Plat equivalents in the country split amongst the legacies.
Let's say they each fly an average of 50 trips per year, that would equal 5,000,000 trips. If we assume that most elites are business travelers and that they as a group book closer to the departure date and mostly without weekend stays, then I think it is a fair assumption that the average fare paid might be 2x that paid by kettle (and I believe the multiplier is greater btw). That would then bring us to about 10,000,000 trip equivalents, except the yield is better than 2x because the Plat equivalents used less company resources per dollar in revenue, making them more profitable, still. So if there were a 20% gain in resource usage, the trip equivalents are up to 12,000,000. That's almost half as much as the kettles you computed.
If you add Gold equivalents and Silver equivalents, elites represent a huge amount of revenue relative to their percentage of the flying public. And, unlike kettle, an airline can "count" on these flyers to a greater extent, thereby creating a sort of support system to compensate the more volatile discount segment.
Add to this, that the highest yielding customers, the ones paying full fare Y and Business and First fares are mostly elites, and you can further add to the trip equivalent count of the elites.
And of course, just like with kettle, the families of elites also fly. And because the elites are usually heavily invested in the airline of their choice, they tend to steer business in that direction and they are less sensitive to price.
Virtually all airlines have figured out these economics, which is why they all reward the elites more than kettles. Even your 'vive la bourgeoisie' CO claims to get it. In the inflight mag, Jeff makes a point to mention that CO is more dedicated to business travelers than ever.
Except reality and the experience of many indicate the exact opposite.
No matter what math you might do, Elites account for an outsized portion of any airline's revenue, and an even more outsized portion of its profits.
If CO continues to thumb their nose at their elites in current fashion, I believe bad things will happen.
I am still optimistic that the merger and the incorporation of UA will take CO off its current path, but I am not holding my breath.