[sharedbeans]

You say that as if you cannot buy a car or an airline ticket. In fact you can, because airlines fly planes and sell tickets on them, and car manufacturers make cars and sell them.

It may be cute to say “X is a bank”, but an airline is not a bank. Besides the obvious facts that you cannot withdraw money from an account or pay your bills, if they didn’t fly planes the points would be ~worthless.

The fact that they don’t profit from those activities is a market economy working as intended*. Cars and flights are easily substitutable goods, you’d expect to see the profit competed down to ~nothing.

*Arguably there is getting to be too much consolidation in the airline industry, and also legal limits on airport gates act as a huge barrier of entry for new competition.

(edited for clarity)