Surprise profit master of the decade: Airlines

While the peanuts get staler and seats get smaller... the profits are growing. US airlines are about to post their 10th straight year of profits — that's their longest streak in over 40 years. Here's why it's shocking:

• 80%: The percentage of Americans who'd never flown on a plane in 1965 (air travel used to be a mega-luxury — now it's sweatpants).
• 1978: The year the Airline Deregulation Act passed. Before it, the government basically guaranteed airline profitability by limiting competition and keeping ticket prices high.
• 50%: The amount flight prices have fallen since Uncle Sam unleashed competition in the skies. Air travel is way cheaper now as low-priced carriers took off.
• $59B: The massive losses of the US airline industry from 1979-2009.

Experiencing turbulence... In 1974, an airline couldn't charge less than $1,442 for a NYC-LA flight. After deregulation, airlines struggled as cheaper absolutely-no-meal-included flights went mainstream. Then this happened:

• The Mega-bankruptcies: The jumbo OGs (American, United and Delta) went bankrupt.
• The Mega-mergers: When they emerged from bankruptcy, they started merging (remember Delta + Northwest?) — that left 4 airlines in control of a whopping 77% of today's flying market.

Here's what $15B gets you... A trophy you give to yourself. Netflix splurged all those billions of investors' cash on 2019's original content — movies/shows produced by Netflix, sprinkled with Jennifer Aniston and Stranger Things. Now Netflix is boasting that its releases this year were more watched than any other studio on the platform.

• #1: Adam Sandler and Jen's Murder Mystery won the charts.
• American Top 10: All of the 10 most popular new content were Netflix creations, except one: Disney's Incredibles 2.
• International flavors: Netflix's The Naked Director led Japan's ranking, while its police drama Sacred Games dominated India's.

Cue the asterisks... (we noticed plenty of them).

1. Those rankings don't include older content, like reruns of The Office and Friends that dominate your binging habits.
2. Neflix didn't provide actual viewer numbers to go along with those rankings.
3. You didn't have to watch the whole thing — just 2 minutes of streaming qualified you as a "viewer." Because, you know, short attention sp-

• Worn: Tom's Shoes is struggling to bounce back to its BOGO glory days — now the creditors it owes money to are taking over the company
• MIA: Carlos Ghosn is the legendary ex-CEO of Nissan/Renault/Mitsubishi who's supposed to be under house arrest in Japan — now he's fled to Lebanon
• Arrived: Nio (the Tesla of China) saw its stock price nearly double at one point for its best single day since its IPO
• $$$: Venmo was down yesterday. Yes. It wasn't just you. (FYI, it's owned by PayPal)
• Swoop: Uber's $3.1B acquisition of Middle Eastern ride-hail rival Careem was approved by Egyptian regulators
• Winners: The most influential products of the last decade (Trader Joe's rice cauliflower made the cut)

• The last day of stock trading for the decade (markets are closed on New Year's Day)
• Earnings from Pivotal Software

Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Tesla and Uber

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