You should always be suspicious of claims by or about a company that they made no profit when they were able to throw billions at propping up their stock price. If it's true it's financial malpractice, but it's no more believable than the shenanigans of highly profitable megacorporations that somehow end up paying no federal taxes.

What I said was that total profits for 50 or 60 years, for all airline companies put together, were $0. But any one company, for a period of several years, certainly could be doing well enough to reasonably buy back stock. It doesn't have to be financial malpractice. (It may be, but my statement doesn't mean that it is.)