The July-August edition of Flightglobal’s management magazine Airline Business features its latest World Airline Rankings, detailing the 2014 performance of the 100 biggest airline groups – whose revenue was up 2.6% to $704 billion for the year.

After its merger with US Airways, it's no surprise American Airlines rules the roost with $42.6 billion in group revenues. The three US majors generated revenues of over $122 billion, leading North American carriers as a regional group to a world-beating $219 billion revenue.

But as the snapshot below shows, there are many ways to gauge size – and while mighty AA also tops the table by operating profit (at nearly $4.3 billion), arch-rival Delta carried more than twice as many passengers and racked up more than half again as many revenue-passenger kilometres – the much-watched measure of how many paying passengers were carried how far.

For the full report, see Airline Business.

top 10 by revenue

AA A330 c AirTeamImages

The Big Beast

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top 10 by passengers

Delta 767-332ER c AirTeamImages

Also very big

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top 10 rpk

Delta 757-232 c AirTeamImages

Really PacKs 'em in

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Source: FlightGlobal.com