Thanks to rising costs, it’s no surprise profits have declined at Air Canada and WestJet. But rising costs alone don’t explain how these Canadian carriers continue to consistently underperform their U.S. peers by a noticeable margin. Meanwhile in Europe, carriers like Ryanair, Aer Lingus, British Airways, Lufthansa, Swiss and others are putting up numbers very much like their U.S. counterparts.

Unfortunately, Air France is not one of those carriers, as that airline nearly lost money in the usually healthy second quarter, and that reduced the Air France/KLM group result to a scant 5% operating profit margin. Meanwhile, the Lufthansa group is making great strides, posting an 11% second-quarter margin, which is quite comparable to IAG’s 13.5%.