Question of the day
2026-07-18
Estimate the total annual revenue of the US airline industry (domestic passenger).
Answer it out loud first — like you would in the room. Then check yourself:
Reveal the model answer
Model answer
Bottom-up. ~330M people; assume ~half fly at least once a year and frequent flyers pull the average up — say ~2 round trips/year on average across flyers → call it ~800M-900M passenger trips/year. Average domestic fare ~$300-400 round trip. Revenue ≈ ~850M × ~$350 ≈ ~$300B. Sanity check: US passenger airline operating revenue is on the order of $200-250B (more once you add international and cargo), so $200-300B is the correct magnitude. The trips-per-flyer assumption is the biggest swing.
Want 10 of these a day, scheduled so they stick?
A free account gets you Daily 10 — ten questions a day from the full 2,000+ bank, spaced-repetition scheduled. No credit card.