As Americans slim down with the help of weight-loss drugs, U.S. airlines could be among the surprise beneficiaries, a new report suggests.
That’s because the lighter a plane is, the less fuel it requires — and fuel is one of an airline’s biggest costs, according to Sheila Kahyaoglu, an equity analyst at the financial firm Jefferies, which led a study that highlighted some potential upsides of Americans’ embrace of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs for four of the U.S.’s largest carriers.
“A slimmer society = lower fuel consumption,” Kahyaoglu wrote.
Airlines are obsessive about keeping costs low and have already taken creative steps to lighten their loads, according to the report. In 2018, United started printing its airline magazine on lighter paper — a move that saved the carrier roughly $290,000 in fuel costs a year at the time. (There are likely even more cost savings since 2024, when United eliminated its in-flight magazine.) The carrier has also switched to lighter beverage carts. For other carriers, shifting from paper flight manuals to electronic tablets shaved off 80 pounds per flight — a savings of 576,000 gallons of fuel per year, the report said.
But one thing that airlines weren’t able to control was their passengers’ waistlines, which over the last few decades continued to grow, with the adult obesity rate reaching nearly 40 percent in 2022, according to Gallup.
However, that number dropped to 37 percent in 2025 — a decline that came as more Americans reported using GLP-1 medication specifically for weight loss. According to Gallup, in just over a year, the number of people using the drugs — including Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound — jumped to 12.4 percent from 5.8 percent in February 2024.
“With the drug now available in pill form and obesity rates falling, broader usage could have further implications for waist lines,” the report said.
Using a Boeing 737 Max 8 as an example, Kahyaoglu calculated that if the plane were carrying 178 passengers who weighed an average of 180 pounds, the aircraft’s total weight, including fuel and cargo, would be roughly 181,200 pounds. But if those passengers lost an average of 10 percent for an average weight of 162, the total load would be about 3,200 pounds lighter.
For American, Delta, Southwest and United, which are expected to consume roughly 16 billion gallons of fuel in 2026 at a cost of roughly $38.6 billion — that difference in weight could translate to about $580 million in fuel savings per year, the report estimated.
As for the carriers, they declined to weigh in on the findings.
Still, there could be some potential downsides if other sources of airline revenue decline. For example, sales of chips, baked goods and packaged cookies have fallen among GLP-1 users, prompting Kahyaoglu to include this caveat: “Please note savings are pre any lost snack sales.”
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