What if you bought United Airlines in 2010?
US Consumer · Airlines. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play7.3× · S&P 500 same money: $6,071
$1,000 in United Airlines at the start of 2010 would be worth about $7,308 today — 7.3 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
The modern United traces to 2010, when UAL merged with Continental Airlines under Continental's CEO Jeff Smisek. The merger was meant to create a global giant, but integrating the two carriers proved messy, with reservation-system problems and labour disputes in 2012. The shares nevertheless climbed strongly in the middle of the decade as US airlines consolidated and profits rose with fees and disciplined capacity.
Embarrassments followed. Smisek left in 2015 amid a federal inquiry into a route arrangement with the New York-area port authority, and in 2017 a video of a passenger being dragged off an overbooked flight became a global reputation crisis. Covid then grounded most of the fleet in 2020, and United raised money and took federal aid to survive. Under CEO Scott Kirby it bet on international routes and premium cabins, and it ordered many new aircraft. The share price of 2026 was only modestly above its 2020 level, despite record travel demand along the way.
The lesson: Mergers promise synergies quickly but deliver integration headaches slowly; markets often price the promise long before the work is done.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | $13.00 | $7,308 | $6,071 | 7.3× |
| 2012 | $19.00 | $5,000 | $5,312 | 5.0× |
| 2015 | $67.00 | $1,418 | $3,301 | 1.4× |
| 2018 | $68.00 | $1,397 | $2,519 | 1.4× |
| 2020 | $88.00 | $1,080 | $2,092 | 1.1× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2010, turning $1,000 into $7,308. The S&P 500 from that same year: $6,071.
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. United Airlines is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
Play Sixty-40More in US Consumer
- What if you bought Walmart?
- What if you bought Home Depot?
- What if you bought Costco?
- What if you bought Target?
- What if you bought Best Buy?
- What if you bought Starbucks?