I remember reading about how the major airlines now are more of a "bank that happens to have planes," due to the loyalty programs being worth significantly more than the airline. Delta Air Lines earned $8.2 billion from American Express in 2025, surpassing ticket sales revenue. [1]

I primarily use my favorite's airlines credit card because it gives me perks such as priority seating, and free checked bags. I am pretty certain that the credit card fees (that is passed on to the merchant) does not come close to the value that I gain for my credit card loyalty. It is a stupid game that I am forced to play, because the credit cards also provide other benefits, such as fraud protection.

I am wondering right now if "Spirit Air 2.0" even has a fighting chance if they are not able to subsidize operating costs by also being a credit card company.

[1] https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/delta-air-lines-m...

>Delta Air Lines earned $8.2 billion from American Express in 2025, surpassing ticket sales revenue.

Just to be clear, that isn't what the article says. It says more than what "most" airlines generate in ticket sales. Not Delta, or any major US carrier. As interesting as that sounds, it couldn't logically make sense and it only represents about 15% of Delta's revenue. It's not even a straightforward revenue stream, it works for profitability because they are able to book most of the revenue immediately and able to mark down the future expense because of how loyalty rewards are obligated.

This isn't really a bad thing. Any company that monetizes credit cards can only do so because of their real, core product. They aren't really just banks like people claim. If they didn't fly people places reliably the whole thing collapses.

It's really just a surprising morph of their economic model in the post regulation era.

> I am pretty certain that the credit card fees (that is passed on to the merchant) does not come close to the value that I gain for my credit card loyalty.

Generally it's the interchange fees that fund reward programs (charged between banks), not the merchant fee.

https://stripe.com/au/resources/more/interchange-fees-101-wh...

> I primarily use my favorite's airlines credit card because it gives me perks such as priority seating, and free checked bags.

That's a reason to have an airline credit card, it's not a reason to use it (other than for purchasing that airline's tickets)

> It is a stupid game that I am forced to play

You are not forced to play it. That is a just story you tell yourself. You can make a different choice.

This loyalty program is the business is oversold imo, done to death by every content creator. It's the data, the data blah blah

The $8.2billion from American express pays basically is buying tickets and ticket extra, it buys them some points, lets ignore multiples for now, it buys them 8.2billion points, which they give to customers which then buys tickets.

If Spirit accepts USDC instead it wouldn't be that much different.