The owner of British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Level and Vueling has put together a Capital Markets presentation and one slide is quite interesting. It shows the airline group’s most profitable destinations.
Sadly, it doesn’t list which cities they are, but perhaps someone reading would like to have a bit of a guess. There are 10 cities in total, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to work out.
IAG’s Most Profitable Destinations
You can find the full presentation as a PDF right here. Looking at it, New York would have to be number one, which should come as no surprises to anyone. It is one of the most profitable routes in the world.
Intriguingly, the second most profitable city is in South America. Number three could well be Boston, considering the large Aer Lingus share, and the Irish airline having twice daily service there.
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- Can you guess them all?
Quite frankly I was surprised to see a second South American station listed there at number five. Perhaps the most difficult one to guess would be at number eight, cloaked under the guise of “Rest of World”. Is it an Asian city? Somewhere in India? Who knows.
Of course, this is commercially sensitive information, which is why it is not stated clearly. With a bit of deduction based on the carriers serving the routes, perhaps educated guesses can be made. No doubt the analysts at the competing airlines will be able to make it out easier than I can.
Overall Thoughts
Airline results presentations always contain fascinating nuggets of information. It’s helpful for shareholders, people interested in aviation and more.
What are your guesses? I’d love to hear what you think. Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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#8 CPT/JNB ?
Maybe JNB? I would guess that over CPT, as CPT is more leisure, no? Good thinking, I hadn’t considered South Africa.
I think #2 would be Buenos Aires? It does have at least 2 daily IB flights, 1 daily BA and I daily Level out of BCN?
#5 I would guess it is Bogotá
In a way I think Iberia dominates the spanish speaking countries and TAP dominates Brazil.
That might make sense actually, I hadn’t thought of Bogotá. Nice thinking there, can’t fault that at all!
Slide 40 has clues with a map of destinations by airline in Latam…
#5 is a two airline airport. BOG is only Iberia, so that’s ruled out.
GRU and GIG are 2 airline, so it’s one of those unless they’re counting Central America, in which case MEX is a possibility but unlikely.
EZE and SCL are the only 3 airline destinations (so EZE is likely the #2)
The rest in South America are one airline airports
Some good sleuthing there! EZE, I didn’t think Argentina had an economy which was that good to be so lucrative though I could be wrong. You might be getting somewhere with MEX though!
I guessed before reading the article. I guessed Aberdeen. The presentation appears to be which airport station has the most profit, not the highest profit margin.
Fair enough!