Four years ago, Delta Air Lines flew into a new decade. With industry-record revenues of more than $50 billion, the world’s premier international airline was at the top of its class with all signs pointed toward more growth. By March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought that progress to a halt.
In the first month of the pandemic, Delta’s ticket sales dropped to just 3 percent of prior-year totals and, by the end of the year, reported more than $12 billion in losses. Yet because of the leadership of CEO Ed Bastian, the airline managed to avoid involuntary furloughs. Meanwhile, thousands of Delta people stepped up, with more than 40,000 taking voluntary leaves of absence.
“As difficult as this crisis has been for all of us, it has revealed the strength of Delta’s character and the power of our people and values-led culture. From the first days of the pandemic we focused on three priorities: Protecting jobs, as well as the health and safety of our employees and customers; preserving our liquidity and cash balance to get us through the crisis; and positioning Delta for the future,” Bastian says.
2021 was a year of uneven recovery for the airline. A slow first quarter gave way to a busy summer as Americans resumed leisure travel, though business travel continued to lag. A mid-summer COVID spike decreased profit forecasts for the second half of the year, but margins remained ahead of chief competitors United and American, maintaining a pre-pandemic lead.
The resumption of incoming international flights in November was termed a “last step of the recovery” by Bastian, and 2022 looks to be a full return to normalcy. While domestic capacity is up to 84 percent of 2019 levels, transatlantic and transpacific capacity remains below 50 percent. Yet current projections have airline officials confident that Delta will return to full 2019 capacity – if not above – by the second half of the year.
In 2022 Delta is prepared to ramp up flying to meet ever-increasing demand both in terms of leisure travel, which is approaching pre-COVID levels already, and business travel which continues to lag. Looking abroad, Latin American capacity is already back up to 93 percent, and as Europe and Asia fully open that traffic should also bounce back towards 2019 numbers later this year.
Today, Atlanta remains Delta’s busiest hub with non-stop flights to 175 destinations. The airline operates more than 750 peak day flights, which is more than 75 percent of all Georgia-based flights. In addition to the Atlanta hub, Delta also provides critical daily service to Georgia’s regional economic hubs including: Albany, Augusta, Brunswick, Columbus, Savannah, and Valdosta. Internationally, Delta has 56 daily departures to 39 international destinations including destinations in Europe, Asia, South America, Central America and Africa.
There is further good economic news on job creation. Since the beginning of 2021, Delta has hired 8,000 new employees, more than 5,000 were from Georgia alone– with more on the way.
Delta continues to hire talented professionals across the business including in TechOps, Reservations and Customer Care, Airport Customer Service and Cargo and Flight Operations. Currently, Delta is looking to recruit 1,000 new pilots over the next year. When the company announced it was looking to hire approximately 3,000 new flight attendants in September, it received more than 35,000 applications–forcing it to shut down its application system due to the overwhelming response.
“While we are still in recovery mode, Delta is on a path to return to pre-pandemic levels of business,” said Jeff Davidman, Delta’s Vice President of State and Local Government Affairs. “We are proud to call Georgia our home and appreciate that we operate from a state that is a great place for business.”
Patrick Hickey is the office manager as well as a staff writer for InsiderAdvantage Georgia and James magazine.
