Originally Posted by
Global321
I don't believe that is the generally accepted vernacular. While technically you may be correct, I believe this is more accurate when speaking about tickets:
Revenue ticket - paid with cash
Award ticket - paid with miles
Non-Revenue ticket - airline employee ticket
It is technically correct - an award ticket is a revenue ticket, and the value of the ticket is reported as "Passenger revenue" in AA's financial statements, and all associated metrics (e.g., PRASM). So it's definitely part of revenue. Here's one snippet of language from AAL's 10-K filing regarding the accounting for award miles earned from traveling (they do something similar for award miles sold to partners).:
For mileage credits earned through travel, we apply a relative selling price approach whereby the total amount collected from each passenger ticket sale is allocated between the air transportation and the mileage credits earned. The portion of each passenger ticket sale attributable to mileage credits earned is initially deferred and then recognized in passenger revenue when mileage credits are redeemed and transportation is provided.
I'd also note that while award tickets and cash paid tickets may be treated differently in some regards, there is a much bigger difference between either of these and real non-revenue tickets (employee travel).
Regardless of what some people may use, it's not good practice to use the term "revenue ticket" or similar when specifically referring to non-award/cash paid tickets.