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Beyond the Boarding Pass: Revealing Findings from the Yearbook of Ancillary Revenue – Article

October 26, 2026

IdeaWorksCompany Article

In this article I write about my favorite section of the Yearbook: Interesting Items in This Yearbook. It’s a compilation of more than 40 specific ancillary revenue disclosures made by airlines. These are rarely exposed facts that describe products and revenue statistics, some of which you may find bizarre and amusing. I invite you to download a free copy of the Yearbook at my website to review this section, and the entire 110-page publication.

You Can Buy An Empty Middle Seat—And Some Airlines Will Buy Back Tickets You Can’t Use

September 11, 2026

View from the Wing

easyJet’s vacation business generated £250 million in pretax profit last year. That’s nearly 38% of the airline group’s earnings. Selling customers the rest of their trip has become a huge part of what makes the airline profitable.

Southwest wants some of that business, too. They’ll even give you back two free checked bags when you buy a vacation package. But after trumpeting packages as part of their turnaround, they’ve been much quieter about how that business is actually doing.

The new IdeaWorks Yearbook of Airline Ancillary Revenue from Jay Sorensen has some great examples of airlines finding things customers might actually want to buy. There’s plenty of money to be made selling a better trip.

Airlines Are Getting Better at Selling Ancillaries. But Can Their Distribution Channels Keep Up?

September 11, 2026

Travel Distribution News

Airlines have learned how to monetize the passenger beyond the ticket. According to the 2026 SeatMaps.com Yearbook of Ancillary Revenue, produced by IdeaWorksCompany, total ancillary revenue across 58 airlines tracked in both the 2025 and 2026 editions grew 13.4% in 2025, nearly double the 7.2% growth in total revenue across the same carriers.

That is where the ancillary story stops being a revenue story and becomes a distribution story. The next competitive advantage is not simply selling more add-ons. It is making sure those add-ons can be sold everywhere the ticket itself is sold.

The headline numbers back this up. Thirty of the 58 airlines in the study generated at least $1 billion in ancillary revenue in 2025, up from 27 a year earlier. United Airlines led in absolute terms, with $11.5 billion in ancillary revenue, up 9.3% year over year. Frontier Airlines led on ancillary share of total revenue, at 60.2%. Jet2.com set a new per-passenger record at $100.73. Southwest, newly charging for checked bags, saw its per-passenger ancillary figure jump nearly 20% to $58.25.

Airlines’ ancillary revenue grows twice as fast as overall revenue

September 9, 2026

PhocusWire

Total ancillary revenue for airlines increased 13.4% to $13.2 billion in 2025, while total revenue increased by 7.2%.

The figures were released as part of the annual Yearbook of Ancillary Revenue from IdeaWorksCompany. The report included 63 airlines in total, with 58 included in both the 2025 and 2026 editions and used for the year-over-year comparison.

“Ancillary revenue growth on the pace and scale revealed in this yearbook—double the rate of overall revenue and increasing $13.2 billion among like-for-like airlines—puts a spotlight on how both core and ancillary products are merchandised,” said Djois Franklin, chief executive of SeatMaps, an airline seat-map tech provider and merchandising platform, which sponsored the report.

Report: Airline Ancillary Revenue Soars in 2025

September 8, 2026

Business Travel News

Ancillary revenue growth in 2025 outpaced overall revenue growth for airlines by nearly two to one, according to the latest report from IdeaWorksCompany, released Tuesday.

Total ancillary airline revenue in 2025 for the 58 carriers that appeared in each this and last year’s reports rose about $13.2 billion year over year, a 13.4 percent increase compared with overall airline revenue growth of 7.2 percent, according to the 2026 SeatMaps.com Yearbook of Ancillary Revenue by IdeaWorksCompany. For those same carriers, traffic increased 2.5 percent for the period, showing that “ancillary revenue is a major contributing factor” to carriers’ bottom-line growth.

JetBlue Joins Race for Premium Travelers With Domestic First Class Seats

September 1, 2026

Barron’s

JetBlue unveiled details of “BlueFirst” the airline’s new domestic first-class seating.

JetBlue is joining the industry’s race for premium-paying travelers, rolling out first class seating on domestic flights this fall.

“All the cool kids are chasing premium travelers,” Jay Sorensen, president of IdeaWorks Company in Shorewood, Wis., whose firm specializes in airline ancillary revenue strategy and research, told Barron’s. “This is a market that all airlines aspire to reach, well, perhaps with the exception of Ryanair.”

“Quite frankly, if JetBlue doesn’t offer a product for premium-type passengers, many of them would fly another carrier,” he added. “JetBlue really had no choice. I think it fits in nicely with the NYC base.”

WestJet the latest airline to hike baggage fees amid sky-high jet fuel prices

April 23, 2026

Canadian Press

“How does an airline compensate itself for the losses that are occurring for the first quarter and the second quarter and maybe even the third quarter this year? Fares are not going to track the price of oil, because there is this residual loss that has to be accounted for,” said Jay Sorensen, president of consulting firm IdeaWorksCompany.

For now, the ballooning price of kerosene-based fuel — the oil derivative that powers planes — means older, less energy-efficient aircraft and routes with thinner earnings need to be axed, he said. That carriers have opted to park many planes in storage — Lufthansa cancelled 20,000 summer flights this week — points to how dire the situation is.

“When an airline grounds an airplane or cuts back flights, that’s an indicator of true financial pain, because this is a business that thrives on increasing activity over a fixed-cost base,” Sorensen said.

“It’s going to be a horrible year for the airline industry.”

United’s CEO Is Here to Buy Your Struggling Airline

April 23, 2026

Bloomberg

Scott Kirby wants to run “the unequivocal best airline in history.” Will merger talk, spiking fuel prices and turf wars get in the way?

For all the accolades Kirby gets, though, in some ways he’s followed the lead of Delta Air Lines Inc., which pioneered present-day premium air travel in the US and remains the leader. Delta’s revenue last year was $63 billion, compared with United’s $59 billion. Bloomberg data shows Delta had a profit margin of about 8%; United’s was more than 2 percentage points lower. Even so, through late April, United’s shares had outperformed Delta’s since Kirby was promoted to chief executive officer in May 2020.

“United is just running a hell of an airline right now,” says Jay Sorensen, president of IdeaWorksCompany, an industry consulting firm. “As much as I hate to stroke the ego of Scott Kirby, I would place a tremendous amount of emphasis on his leadership.”

First-Class Seats Drive Airline Profits. It Wasn’t Always This Way

April 10, 2026

New York Times

Historically, tickets were often sold by travel agencies or websites like Expedia, where customers typically shopped on price alone. That made it difficult for airlines to persuade customers to spend more. So carriers spent years increasing direct sales.

By controlling the booking process on their own websites, airlines could offer fares that included perks like free checked bags or priority boarding. Such bundles have been a huge success, said Jay Sorensen, who runs IdeaWorksCompany, a consulting firm that works for airlines and other aviation businesses.

“Direct online selling enabled airlines to be far more creative than they could be in the past in how they present their products,” Mr. Sorensen said.

“We are losing our integrity” – aviation expert warns industry

April 9, 2026

Handelsblatt

Jay Sorensen knows the world of airlines. For many years, as president of the consulting firm Ideaworks, he has analyzed the business models of airlines around the globe. In doing so, he also draws on his wealth of experience as a former airline manager.

Sorensen spent approximately twelve years in marketing at Midwest Express Airlines, a small airline in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. For a long time, it was able to hold its own against the significantly larger competitor, Northwest Airlines. One feature – for example, the airline had premium seats throughout the entire cabin. Another was the legendary chocolate cookie baked on board, which Lufthansa subsidiary Discover Airlines has just rediscovered.

According to Sorensen, passengers today have to search long and hard for such flight experiences. In an analysis published in February, the former airline manager examines some of the aviation industry’s practices. His sobering conclusion: Airlines are jeopardizing their own credibility and the trust placed in them through their actions. Rules and prices are becoming increasingly opaque for passengers.

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