Delta Air Lines’ brought in record revenue in 2024, with financial results that CEO Ed Bastian says will be a set up for the “best financial year in Delta’s 100-year history” in 2025.
The Atlanta airline, which pulled in nearly $62 billion in revenue last year, also announced $1.4 billion in annual profit sharing with its 100,000 employees to be distributed in February.
That figure is on pace with last year’s total but slightly behind their record $1.6 billion profit sharing payout from financial results in pre-COVID times.
Delta’s 2024 profit of about $3.5 billion will represent about half of the entire industry’s gains, Bastian predicted, “despite the fact we’re only about 20% of the market. So that’s a pretty good quadrant to live in.”
The profit came in about $1 billion below 2023’s number, largely due to gains in its investment portfolio last year.
The company’s results for the last three months of 2024 were “the most profitable December quarter in our history,” Bastian said.
And the strongest revenue growth of any business unit for the quarter was in trans-Atlantic travel, which Bastian said is “far, far greater than it’s ever been.”
What’s been clear after COVID “is that the desire to travel, particularly internationally, is stronger than ever.” Trans-Atlantic represents more than half of the world’s total international travel right now, he said, but the “future really is the rest of the world.”
His optimism for 2025, he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an interview, is rooted in a few things: the company’s recovery after the depths of COVID, the strength of the brand as it lines up partnerships with the likes of Uber and YouTube and the fact that the 40,000 employees hired over the last several years now have the experience needed to make “a major impact.”
Plus industrywide, he said, supply and demand is much better balanced than “anytime I can recall in my 25 years in the business.”
2025 will also be the year Delta’s controversial modifications to SkyMiles elite status kick in based on 2024 spending and loyalty. Bastian said while they haven’t sorted through all the 2024 data, the year “largely went as we anticipated” and spending “has not come down.”
That includes consumer spending on the company’s lucrative American Express card, which continues to run “above industry norms, not just airline industry but overall consumer card industries,” he noted.
The AmEx partnership is just one of the multitude of things Delta has been working on for the last 15 years to build itself into a high-end airline and brand, which allows it to command a premium over its competitors.
That has looked like higher-end lounges and a slew of add-ons the company has launched and has planned for the future. Its private jet subsidiary Wheels Up and partnership with electric air taxi startup Joby are further examples.
But Bastian insists it’s not at the expense of fliers who need lower cost tickets. “We love all of our customers.”
“Every single customer gets the high-end reliability and performance and service level that all of our customers deserve. And obviously, the more you pay…the more you should get. And that’s how we thought about premium,” he said.
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