Originally Posted by The Situation

The flyers paying the bills???? By your logic, status should be awarded to AmEx employees and cardholders only.

From Delta's 10K published in February, Loyalty Program revenues were $2.6 billion in 2022. "[Loyalty Program revenue] relates to brand usage by third parties and other performance obligations embedded in miles sold, including redemption of miles for non-travel awards. These revenues are mainly driven by customer spend on American Express cards and new cardholder acquisitions. On continued strength in co-brand card spend and card acquisitions, revenues from our relationship with American Express increased in 2022 compared to 2021." Net income was $1.3 billion in 2022. Knowing that DL received total cash from the Loyalty Program agreements of $5.7 billion, and that they allocate the revenue across the categories that it is used in, the $2.6 billion represents the net income of the AmEx agreement. Since the profit from AmEx is greater than DL's total profit it seems that flyers don't pay the bills, but AmEx and their cardholders.