alt Hacker News> It explicitly says that United is using standard accounting practices and proposes the “pass through” mechanism as a “better” metric.
>Based on the source I, personally, don’t find it to be a credible argument
Agreed. This just has "if we redefine [commonly used term], then we get a more shocking/favorable number for our cause" vibes. You see this in government statistics as well, eg. "the official unemployment rate might be 4% (or whatever), but if you factor in people who are discouraged and people who are underemployed (whatever that means), it's actually 15%!" or "the official poverty rate might be 10%, but if you redefine 'poverty' to mean 'not being able to raise a family of 4 on a single income', the actual poverty rate is 40%!"
It's not a redefinition, it's a reclassification.
We have a set of accounting rules that apply to firms who are middlemen with clearly distinct transactions with both their suppliers and customers. We have another set of accounting rules that apply to firms who act as a third party agent in a transaction.
Whenever you have such a classification, you are always going to have a gray area in between, firms where a judgement has to be made on which set of rules to apply.
Your unemployment example is great: we have 6 different definitions of unemployment, U1 through U6. Different ones should be used in different situations. And there are grey areas between the classifications -- are you a "discouraged worker" (u4) or "marginally attached worker" (u5)?