The annoying thing is... I already have a United card :) (and being able to board early and bring a normal size carry-on on basic economy is one of the best perks).

> flying people places doesn't make enough money

Does it not make enough money for viability, or does it not make enough money for sociopath types in C-suites?

If it’s the latter, there will never be enough money for them and will keep pushing increasingly absurd customer-milking initiatives.

There's not a single major US airline that is profitable on charging passengers for tickets and flying them to destinations.

United is the closest, with only a 0.04¢ loss on every seat mile.[1] the other airlines lose 1-2¢/mile.

The jets are a loss leader for credit cards.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-airlines-lost-money-flyin...

[1] There's two metrics airlines report: Cost per Available Seat Mile and Passenger Revenue per Available Seat Mile.

This is the cost/revenue for flying a seat, which may or may not be occupied by a person, to a destination. If the seat is empty it gets $0 in revenue but still costs money.

You can calculate the profit made from selling tickets per seat mile by PRASM - CASM.

Thank you for the clarification. It’s hard to not be cynical as a passenger with no experience in this environment.

Can't they just raise prices?

People keep asking airlines to raise price for better service and then every time they travel they hop on a price comparison website to find the ticket with the lowest sticker price, punishing companies for actually raising prices.

Delta raised prices, delivered better service, and is more profitable than any other US airline.

Look at prices (which are much higher than when I booked my trip later this summer), United prices are insane compared to others. Their prices were 4x what I paid for on SAS. I've long had a united club card, but likely circulating that out in the next year. Their prices for service/availability isn't worth whatever crack smoking is going into their pricing.