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[quote user="ndbprr"]Nobody made or makes money hauling people.  Never did and never will.  [/quote]Airlines and bus companies make money carrying passengers.  Over time they have to generate net income or they go out of business, although they can have some really bad years.  This is the nature of business.  Most of the nation's airlines had a relatively good financial year in 2007.  This year is likely to be much more difficult, given the dramatic increase in fuel costs.  Many of the nation's carriers will finish the year in the red, although Southwest is projected to have positive net income for the year.Southwest Airlines had an operating profit of $838 million, with net income of $590 million, for the four quarters ended October 31, 2007.  However, it is not the only U.S. carrier that made money on domestic operations.  Other domestic or largely domestic carriers, e.g. AirTrans, Air Wisconsin, American Eagle, etc. had solid operating profits.  In fact, most of the carriers had a positive return on their domestic operations, although the big carriers had a better return on their international operations.  U.S. passenger airlines with annual revenues of more than $20 million had a combined return of $7.4 billion on operating revenues of $130.9 billion and realized a combined net income of $4.6 billion.    Operating profits were 5.7 per cent of revenues or sales, whilst net income was 3.5 per cent of revenues.  These margins are slim when compared to many businesses, but they are solid for the airline business, which has always operated with razor thin margins.  It is the nature of the business.Had it not been for an extraordinary net income loss at Comair ($479 million), the country's largest carriers would have realized net income of $5.5 billion or 4.2 per cent of revenues.  The extraordinary item was related to Comair's crash in Ohio.  The average operating revenue per passenger was $193.04, whilst the average operating cost was $182.10, leaving an average operating profit of $10.94 per passenger.  Greyhound was acquired in the last year by First Group, which is a UK based transport conglomerate.  First Group earned 267.1 million pounds before adjustments; it earned 560.8 million pounds before interest, taxes, and depreciation.  It does not show the earnings for its North American operations, which includes Greyhound, but management reported that all of its operations, including Greyhound, realized net income.  I suspect that Greyhound, as well as many of the other North American bus companies, realize a greater return on their charter operations than scheduled operations, but I have not checked it out in any depth.
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