Friday, February 13th was Profit Sharing Day at Delta. They paid out $1.3 billion in bonuses and also announced raises. Profit sharing amounted to 8.9% of salaries or about a month’s worth of pay.
Delta’s profit sharing exceeds the amounts paid out by the rest of the U.S. airline industry combined and it’s the ninth time they’ve paid out over $1 billion in profit sharing – basically every year since 2014 with a break during the pandemic.
- Delta has an industry-leading profit sharing formula (American matches that formula with some work groups, but doesn’t make much moeny)
- Delta makes more money than the rest of the industry
- So their profit sharing was more than that of the other airlines in the U.S. industry combined.
Those are the impressive numbers, but $1.3 billion isn’t just a number. It’s something very human. Because, while I’m a regular critic of Delta in a lot of ways, there’s something for employees of the airline to celebrate working there. Their shared efforts at service, reliability, and taking care of customers comes back in one clear moment each year in a very concrete way. And the whole company stops to live in that moment.
Here’s a great look at the actual day itself at headquarters, with each work group hosting celebrations, “a legit party over in IT” with DJs, karaoke, slushies, candy, video game rooms – and peach cobbler. Gelato from flight ops!
Delta’s business class isn’t better than American’s business class. They still fly too many 767s with an ancient seat. American AAdvantage and even MileagePlus are better loyalty programs than SkyMiles. But Delta employees are more likely to seem like they want to be at work on a given day, to appear happy to actually do their jobs, and exude a sense of professionalism. That shines through to customers.
Problems at American aren’t just cultural. They’re fleet and passenger layout (they don’t have enough premium seats, including extra legroom coach). But the culture at Delta is just so much stronger, that goes a long way towards making them more profitable, and profit sharing aligns incentives so that this cycle becomes self-reinforcing. Culture is a big part of why I say that the CEO of an airline has to sell their vision to employees, not just tweak policies and sign off on capital investment.
Hard pass on Delta
Wildly overpriced
a rip off on redemption seats and revenue tickets
and then their prehistoric aircraft which dinosaurs once flew
Off topic Skyteam meh
award availability dismal .Let the uninformed buyer beware
I’m genuinely happy for their team members happiness and financial success
The only thing I can give Delta some credit for is there premium lounge experience at LAX
it’s the best of any Legacy carrier in the US.If only they could get their lounge to fly
I might be a customer.
AA FA’s passed around a bottle of Boone’s Farm and snarled at pax to celebrate their profit share
Just flew from Atlanta to Paris and found the beds spacious enough to be comfortable and the people kind and caring
I go out of my way to fly Delta. While it does have a significant share of the markets I fly to the most, I simply refuse to pay a premium (and be convinced it is a premium product) to fly its B767-300ER, B767-400ER, and A330-200/300s. My most heavily traveled routes are to LAX, CDG, LHR, ZRH, and FCO.
The airline is far better run than any of its US peers, that is true (except when it comes to recovery from IT issues and weather, in which case it melts down and blames passengers).
The premium lounge experience is a cut above, yes, but that’s because the Delta One product in the air is wildly inconsistent seat wise.
In any case, all this enterprise splurge is nice, but when the US lands in a deep recession, which it is going to, all those employee perks will be forgotten.
First sentence should read, I go out of my way to NOT fly Delta.
Delta figured out a long time ago that taking care of its people gives them the incentive to take care of DL’s customers.
Southwest copied the same philosophy even for a highly unionized workforce but has struggled to deliver over the past couple years – and yet their people are still pretty loyal to the company.
American and United have long had adversarial relations with management – as was true with just about every other legacy carrier although Alaska has done an above average job w/employee relations compared to legacy carriers.
Emirates proves that the notion that an airline must have consistently best in class products is not the basis for good service or rankings. EK also proves that not having to deal w/ short haul and discount domestic passengers gives you a separate clientele. DL understands that principle.
It should also be noted that DL has a strong post deregulation history of growing into other carrier strength markets; no other airline has added 2 organically grown hubs in two other carrier hubs plus continually weakening other carriers in DL hubs; employees like to see their employer win and DL delivers that.
There seems little on the horizon that will keep DL from its leadership position in the industry WRT employee compensation including profit sharing, profitability, and overall customer service.