On average, you earn only 7 dollars per passenger for a flight: this is why airlines focus everything on extra services to avoid closing their balance sheets at a loss.
An airline earns much less than you think, especially on low-cost routes. According to estimates from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), airlines earned an average of just $7 per passenger in 2025.
In fact, almost all of the ticket price is absorbed by costs: fuel, maintenance, aircraft leasing, staff salaries, airport taxes and insurance, which eat up around 96% of revenues.
Strategies
To increase revenue, companies are increasingly focusing on paid baggage fees, seat selection, priority boarding and other extra services, which help boost otherwise very small profits.
In short, every empty seat can mean the difference between a profitable flight and a losing one. Nonetheless, air transport remains a huge business but with low margins: in 2024 the sector generated almost one trillion dollars in revenues, but net profits stopped at around 30 billion, just over 3% of the total.
