Finally, he thought, the worst was behind them. Around Thanksgiving of last year, Delta CEO Ed Bastian was expecting a banner holiday season as Americans’ appetite for air travel rebounded following the pandemic. “I called it the final kick,” Bastian told the Harvard Business Review earlier this year. “We had a very, very busy Thanksgiving holiday. A lot of people back in the skies for the first time. Then two days after Thanksgiving, Omicron hit.” But though Christmas and New Year served a turkey last year, Bastian is expecting a banquet-in-the-skies this year. Not to mention his most anticipated arrival to date: Bastian will spend Thanksgiving in Delta’s hometown of Atlanta with his daughter who’s expecting a boy, and tells me he’s “incredibly excited” about becoming a grandfather for the first time.
In an interview with Fortune in mid-November, Bastian detailed how his flight plan has lifted the airline from the industry-wide tailspin that ended just ten months ago, and how he expects to hit pre-COVID heights of profitability in 2024. All U.S. airlines are greatly benefiting from the collective return to the skies, but Bastian's strategy is distinct in that he's aiming to grab a lot more travelers, and grow margins faster than his rivals, by following a carefully sequenced, two-step plan. The goal: to get "profits and sales consistently back to, or even well beyond, the levels of 2019," Bastian told Fortune. In that year Delta hit $6.6 billion in operating profit, and a robust operating margin of 14%.
