With planes full, Delta takes summer schedule into fall

Restless and buoyed by the strong dollar, Americans were everywhere in Europe over the summer.

And they're still filling planes headed there this fall, Ed Bastian, the chief executive of Delta Air Lines, said in Minneapolis on Tuesday.

"We're flying more to Europe this fall than we've ever flown in any fall in our history," Bastian said in an appearance at the Airports Council International annual conference.

Delta extended its summer transatlantic schedules into the rest of the year, he said.

"I was glad to see the president announce that COVID is behind us," Bastian also told the audience of airport executives and managers, referring to Joe Biden's comment on CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday. "Our travelers decided nine months ago it's behind us."

For an hour, Bastian took questions from Metropolitan Airports Commission CEO Brian Ryks and conference attendees at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

Bastian, a 24-year veteran of Delta, has been chief executive for six years. The Atlanta-based carrier is the dominant airline at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, with 72% of passenger market share last year.

For the last couple of years Bastian has assured his team that next year will be better and more stable. "And every year, I've been wrong," he told the audience, drawing laughter. "It's just gotten crazier."

The sharp rebound in air travel demand this year has given airlines a much needed revenue boost. Delta expects to be profitable for the first time since the pandemic began.

In the second quarter, Delta's domestic passenger revenue was 3% higher than 2019. International passenger revenue was 81% recovered compared to second-quarter 2019.

"The world has wanted to travel again and the world has wanted to travel in unprecedented numbers and the momentum is really, really great to see," Bastian said.

Delta drew down its capacity due to workforce shortages, which have at times this year created schedule disruptions and cancellations.

Since mid-July, Delta's operations are actually running better than they were pre-pandemic, Bastian said.

"For the first 18 days of September, we've operated about 50,000 mainline flights over that period. The sum total of cancellations we had were 43 out of 50,000," he said. "That's a 99.92% completion rate, which candidly our partners, our customers deserve, but when you think about the media narrative that's still out there, people are still nervous and the reality is we've got to continue to prove our way back."

Delta's MSP operations are currently 77% recovered for domestic flights and 75% recovered overall, according to a spokeswoman. Bastian expects service to be fully restored at MSP by summer 2023.

Flights to Europe were restored in spring. Service to Asia has been slower to resume because of pandemic shutdowns there. Delta's service to Seoul from Minneapolis-St. Paul restarts next month. Service to Tokyo will resume next year, Bastian said. "China's obviously a big unknown," he said, referring to the country's lockdowns.

Delta has made $12 billion in investments in airport infrastructure nationwide in recent years, he said. Construction is underway of a second Delta Sky Club opening on Concourse G next spring at Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Delta's also testing "parallel reality" displays that allow up to 100 customers to each see their personalized flight information on a single digital screen — at the same time. Those screens could arrive soon at Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Knowing what he does now, Bastian said he wouldn't have supported as many pilots' early retirements two years ago, which has led to a hiring and training whirlwind to catch up with demand.

Customers still thank him for putting people before profit by leaving middle seats unfilled to reduce capacity for a year and a half, Bastian said.

He drew laughs when he talked about how this year started with uncertainty around the omicron wave and said, "Fortunately, the delta variant was gone. Thank God."