Ryanair moves the most passengers of any airline in the world and doesn't have any cobranded credit cards or loyalty program.

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rhplus 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Ryanair is 3rd by passengers and 7th by passenger miles, according to this wiki page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_airlines_in_the_world

Obviously their model is different to the big American carriers. Perhaps there’s something about the homogeneity of the US domestic market compared to the EU market that favors loyalty based airlines versus budget airlines.

	▲	childintime 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The comments here seem to suggest that the loyalty program funded with credit card margins are to blame for the difference. It suggests we'd be better of eliminating the absurdly high hidden taxes paid to the credit card companies, that in turn act to gamify the business. In the end they raise the cost of doing business, for virtually no benefit at all. It's a monopoly extracting as much wealth they can get away with. The question at the heart of this: How can "the shining light on a hill" be so stupid? It's digging its own demise.