Largest airline companies in the world: the top 17 by revenue, plus the biggest US airlines

This list is for people who sell to airlines: maintenance and parts suppliers, ground handling and airport services, catering, fuel and logistics firms, software and data vendors, training providers and recruiters. It ranks the largest airline groups by revenue from their own annual reports, shows the order by passengers, lists the biggest US airlines, and explains where the buying happens inside a carrier.

The 17 largest airline companies by revenue

Ranks are among the airline groups whose annual reports we opened on 30 October 2026; eight large airlines we couldn't check are listed under the table.

Revenue is total operating revenue as reported: "revenue and other operating income" for Emirates, "revenue and other income" for Qantas, and "total operating revenue" for the Chinese carriers' consolidated income statements. Dollar conversions use the Federal Reserve's 2025 annual average rates (G.5A, released 5 January 2026): $1.1306 per euro, $0.6450 per Australian dollar, and CNY 7.1875, HK$7.7956 and ¥149.5686 per dollar. Emirates' report states that the dirham is fixed at 3.67 to the dollar. The change is in each company's reporting currency. Employees are as each report states them; "not used" means the documents we used for revenue don't give a year-end headcount.

Read these rows with four things in mind:

• Groups are not airlines. Lufthansa Group's total includes €8.0 billion of revenue at Lufthansa Technik (€6.0 billion of it from outside customers) and €3.4 billion in its logistics (cargo) segment; its passenger airlines took €30.6 billion. Emirates is the airline alone; the wider Emirates Group, with the dnata ground handling and travel business, reported AED 150.5 billion and 130,919 employees.
• Fiscal years differ. Emirates, Ryanair and ANA close their years on 31 March and Qantas on 30 June, so their 2026 figures include months that the calendar-year airlines haven't reported yet.
• Alaska's jump is an acquisition. It bought Hawaiian Airlines in 2024. On the pro forma basis in its 10-K, with Hawaiian for all of 2024, revenue rose 3%.
• Not ranked. Air France-KLM, Qatar Airways, Air Canada, Singapore Airlines, Japan Airlines, Korean Air, easyJet and IndiGo all publish annual results, but their investor sites blocked automated access or didn't respond when we checked. Several of them would rank in this table; check their reports before relying on the order below fourth place. Airlines that don't publish full results aren't here either.

The largest airlines by passengers

Passenger counts aren't defined the same way everywhere, so this table shows each airline's own count and what it measures. Delta's and American's 10-Ks don't give a passenger total, so they're missing.

Southwest shows why definitions matter: for the same year it reports 134.1 million revenue passengers carried and 168.3 million enplaned passengers, which count each boarding. Route length matters too. Ryanair's average flight is 790 miles, according to its 20-F, and it earned about €75 per passenger (€15.5 billion over 208 million, our calculation); Emirates flies long-haul and earned about AED 2,460, roughly $670, per passenger.

The largest airlines in the US

From each airline's 10-K for 2025. Spirit's figure combines the periods before and after it emerged from bankruptcy in 2025, as its 10-K presents them. Allegiant agreed in January 2026 to acquire Sun Country. SkyWest flies regional routes under contract for Delta, United, American and Alaska, so its revenue comes from those airlines rather than from ticket sales.

How we built the list

1. What's counted. Total operating revenue for the whole consolidated group, as reported, including cargo, loyalty and maintenance income. That's why groups with big maintenance or cargo arms rank higher than their passenger business alone would put them.
2. Which year. The latest full year each group had reported by 30 October 2026. We don't annualize half years.
3. Currencies. The reported figure first, then dollars at the 2025 average rate. A year-end rate would move some converted figures by a few percent and could swap close neighbors such as Ryanair and ANA.
4. Checking. Every figure comes from the filing or report itself: Form 10-K or 20-F for SEC filers, annual results filed on the Hong Kong exchange for the Chinese carriers and Cathay Pacific, and the companies' own annual reports for the rest.

What the top results get wrong. Aerospace Global News, which Google's AI Overview cites, published its 2025 airline revenue ranking on 3 January 2026, before the airlines had reported their 2025 results, so its figures are trailing twelve-month totals (Delta at $62.92 billion against $63.4 billion in Delta's 10-K) and its Emirates figure is the year to March 2025. Wikipedia's revenue table leaves Emirates out as state-owned, although Emirates publishes an audited annual report. Ratepunk's list still shows 2022 figures with no source, and The Flying Engineer's passenger ranking gives ranges with no year or source at all.

What the list is good for if you sell B2B

Airlines buy in a few big categories. Fuel, aircraft and engines are negotiated at the top with long contracts. The rest is spread across operating departments, and that's where most suppliers sell: maintenance and engineering, airport and ground operations, inflight and catering, crew training, IT and distribution, loyalty and partnerships. Southwest's 10-K shows the shape: of its 72,790 full-time equivalent employees, 32,214 work in air operations, 21,734 in ground operations, 3,727 in maintenance and engineering, and 12,486 in other roles.

General guidance, not taken from any one airline's policies. Station-level services (cleaning, ground equipment, staffing) are often bought airport by airport, while anything touching safety or maintenance goes through quality and regulatory approval first.

Count the stations, not just the headquarters. County Business Patterns, the Census Bureau's count of business locations with paid employees, found 1,858 scheduled passenger air transportation establishments (NAICS 481111) in the US in 2023, with 487,672 employees and $49.3 billion of annual payroll. Ninety of them had 1,000 or more employees. California had the most establishments (230), then Florida (183), Texas (137) and New York (134). These are airport stations, bases and offices, not separate companies. Our guide to how to find decision makers covers finding the station or base leader rather than the corporate inbox.

Worked example

Illustrative example. Flightdeck Coach (flightdeckcoach.example) sells a pilot training app for $25 per pilot per month. Its seller sizes two accounts from their 10-Ks:

• JetBlue: an average of 4,326 full-time equivalent pilots in 2025. Full deployment: 4,326 x $25 x 12 = about $1.30 million a year.
• Allegiant: pilots are 23.6% of about 5,620 full-time equivalent employees, so about 1,330 pilots. Full deployment: 1,330 x $25 x 12 = about $399,000 a year.

The first deal is rarely the whole pilot group. A realistic start is one crew base of 300 pilots: 300 x $25 x 12 = $90,000 a year, which a training director can approve. The seller targets the director of flight training and the chief pilot at that base, and uses the full-fleet figure to show what a rollout is worth. Finding those people across a dozen airlines is the slow part; Bebop researches each account and finds the contacts.

Next step: see how one of these carriers has grown its workforce year by year in our profile of Delta's employees.