Competitive benchmarking

Agree the criteria first, measure every airline on one definition and period, and lead with three findings. Every figure traced to its source, every score to its evidence

Customize this Agent

PPTXXLSX14 steps

The problem

Seven airlines, six definitions of unit cost, and three of them changed this year

The seven airlines take different items out of unit cost, and Delta, American and Alaska have each added an exclusion since their 2025 10-Ks. Stage length is measured differently: Southwest's average flight is 784 miles, United's is 1,460 weighted by aircraft size, and Delta and Alaska do not report one. Unit cost falls as flights get longer, so reported figures rank route length and definitions as much as cost

The request

Benchmark Southwest against Delta, United, American, Alaska and JetBlue for the twelve months to June 30, 2026, with Frontier as the low cost reference. Metrics: capacity growth, load factor, total and domestic unit revenue, unit cost ex fuel, adjusted pretax margin, cobrand card remuneration, seat miles per employee, completion factor and on time arrivals. Unit cost and revenue on one definition, mainline and consolidated, reported and stage adjusted, plus a cost walk by expense line. Score premium seating, loyalty and card partnership, network and hubs, fleet and order book, with evidence. Slides on our attached template: three findings, then the matrix, a chart per metric and implications for Southwest. Agree criteria with me first; ask before dropping an undisclosed metric.

Slide template.pptx

How Axe works

ApprovedChanges asked

Agree the criteriaYour changes before collection

Your reviewApprove, or say what to change

Approved or changes

Slides and workbookSlides, workbook and check report

Final reviewApprove the revised files

Revised slides and workbookRevised files and check report

Step

Normalize the definitions

Prompt

Sent to the model at this step

Put every company on the agreed definitions and show how. Rebuild unit cost from each income statement rather than adjusting the company's own figure: start from total operating expense and remove fuel, special items, profit sharing, gains and losses on aircraft sales, and the costs of refining, maintenance sold to other airlines and freighter flying wherever they are disclosed. List every special item each company removed, so the reader can see where their judgments differ. Where incentive pay is reported as one figure, such as Alaska's performance based pay, decide whether it belongs with profit sharing, state the treatment and show its effect on the ranking. Take special items out of revenue as well as cost, including the $285 million breakage reversal in Southwest's second quarter, and take cargo out of unit revenue. Delta, American and Alaska each added an exclusion after their 2025 10-Ks, so put all four quarters of each period on the agreed basis rather than mixing versions. Build mainline figures beside consolidated ones by taking out regional expense and regional ASMs, from the company's own split or from DOT data where it has none. Alaska's prior twelve months include Hawaiian only from September 18, 2024: use Alaska's combined pro forma figures where it publishes them, and otherwise flag its capacity growth. Restate headcount to full time equivalents and say whose regional employees each figure includes. Then apply the stage length adjustment. Build a unit cost walk from Southwest to each competitor and to Frontier by expense line: salaries, wages and benefits, maintenance, aircraft rent and depreciation, landing fees and airport rents, distribution, regional expense and other, each per ASM on the restated basis. Keep each company's reported figure beside the restated one, with a bridge between them and the source of every step.

Uses

Period
Metrics workbook
Disclosure gaps

Produces

Normalized workbook

What you get back

PPTXBenchmarking slidesThree findings, summary matrix, a chart per metric, the unit cost walk and implications

XLSXBenchmark workbookCriteria, reported figures, restatements with bridges, mainline and consolidated metrics, scores with evidence

Check reportEach figure and score marked checked, recalculated or open

Make it yours

Change the competitors, the metrics and their definitions, or the scoring rubric your team uses. Every step and every prompt can be edited

Customize this Agent

Opens a private copy of this Agent in your workspace, ready to adapt to your own sources

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