What If Airlines Measured Revenue Like Traditional Retailers?

Nearly every brick-and-mortar retailer measures sales the same way — by determining how much revenue they earn from each square foot of store space. By that measure, Apple stores are often considered the world's most effective use of commericial real estate.  But airlines have a more byzantine approach for testing revenue. In the United States, they measure revenue by calculating how much money they earn for each available seat mile they sell. They determine their "available seat miles," or ASMs, by taking the number of seats available and multiplying it by the number of total miles. Elsewhere, airlines tend to do the same, using kilometers as the benchmark. Sometimes the calculation includes just passenger-related revenue, while other times it includes everything, including cargo. Airlines use acronyms like PRASM —meaning passenger revenue per available seat mile — and TRASM, which denotes total revenue per available seat