Not OP, but it is a known fact that the cumulative profits of the airlines industry (in US) over it's history has been basically 0. We can say that essentially airlines are in business to support other businesses.
I believe this is what OP might've been referring to.
The economics of airlines are such that they generally earn a return on capital less than cost of capital.
I think this is exactly where we are heading and OAI-Anthropic are the concordes.