The Vertical Space

#103 Ed Bastian, Delta Air Lines: Raising the ceiling of possibility

• Luka T • Episode 103

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In this episode, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian breaks down what truly differentiates a great airline: people and culture. Ed shares why “take care of your people first” isn’t a slogan (it’s Delta’s operating system!) and how that shows up in reliability, premium customer experience, and everyday leadership. We get a candid look at running a 100,000-person, 5,000-flights-a-day operation; the metrics he checks first (on-time arrivals and cash); and why accessibility and listening are his non-negotiables as a leader.

We also dive into Delta’s broader vision: a connected, premium travel ecosystem that spans free fast Wi-Fi and new entertainment partnerships to deeper integrations with Uber, Wheels Up and, soon, eVTOL links with Joby. Ed frames AI as “augmented intelligence” that empowers frontline teams, outlines how Delta thinks about fortress balance sheets and long-cycle bets, and makes the case that air travel isn’t a commodity but an experience people will choose and pay for. Founders will appreciate his clear wishlist of problems to solve in ops efficiency, maintenance, and crew utilization, and his invitation to bring real solutions, not just ideas.

Mr. Woolman who founded the company a hundred years ago said, take good care of your people first who will then take care of your customers. That was a warning sign to the management team that if you ever lose sight of the importance of your own people, you'll never be able to really have the trust and the confidence of your customers. And so we do that in many, many ways. I spend the majority of my time with my own people. Do a lot of customer events, do a lot in the community, but it's the people side first in celebrating their success, listening to them. I tell folks all the time when they ask me how my day goes, I think I've got a pretty easy day. I can't fly the planes. I don't know how to fix the planes. I have a hard enough time getting through airports and using our technology on the app sometimes. But I know how to care for people and listening to them, getting them the tools they need, the technologies they need, the support they need, the trust that they need, enables them to do a great job, taking care of all of you as customers. Hey everyone welcome back to The Vertical Space and our conversation with Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air LInes. Summarizing this conversation's rather easy. Most of you're curious to know what it really takes to be a great leader or CEO. Most of you're curious to know why Delta is such a great business and airline. Most of you are curious to know what problems you can solve for airlines so that you can bring your technology forward to airlines and their customers. And I'm sure all of you want to understand what the future may bring in business in transportation and in aviation. Well just listen to the next hour of conversation with one of our great leaders and you'll have a better understanding. And after listening, you'll have even more insight into what it takes to lead. To lead a great business and a superior airline. Ed makes clear the essence of Delta and how he sees the future of transportation, of aviation, and of Delta Air Lines. You can't listen to Ed and not be excited about our world, our Country, and our industry, and of course Delta. Our many thanks to Ed and to our guests, we hope you enjoy our talk with one of our greats, Ed Bastian, as you innovate profitably in The Vertical Space. As CEO of Delta Air Lines, Ed Bastian leads 100,000 global professionals who are building the world's premier international airline, powered by a people-driven, customer-focused culture and spirit of innovation. Under Ed's leadership, Delta is transforming the air travel experience with generational investments in technology, aircraft, airport facilities, and most importantly Delta's employees worldwide. A more than 25 year Delta Veteran Ed, has been a critical leader in Delta's long term strategy and champion of putting Delta's shared values of honesty, integrity, respect, perseverance, and servant leadership at the core of every decision. Since being named Delta CEO in May of 2016, and has expanded Delta's leadership position as the world's most reliable airline while growing its global footprint and enhancing the customer experience in the air and on the ground. In 2018, fortune named Ed among the world's 50 greatest leaders. Most recently Time named Ed to the 2025 Time100, its annual list of the hundred most influential people in the world. Ed's values- based leadership propelled the airline to become the industry leader and a trusted global brand, guided by empathy, humanity, and devotion to service, which has served Delta well in good times and bad. Ed joined Delta in 1998 as VP Finance and Controller, he was named Chief Financial Officer in 2005 and in 2007 he was appointed to serve as Delta's President. Before joining Delta Ed held senior finance positions at FritoLay International and PepsiCo International. Ed started his career with PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he became an audit partner in its New York practice. Ed grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, and graduated from St. Bonaventure University with a bachelor's degree in business administration. He lives in Atlanta and is deeply involved in his faith, family, and community. Ed. It's a great pleasure to have you on The Vertical Space. Welcome. Good to be with you. I look forward to this conversation. Thank you. We do too. The Vertical Space is a podcast at the intersection of technology and flight. We recently celebrated our hundredth episode as you are celebrating your hundredth year. Yeah. We talk about the radical impact that technology is having as it enhances flight, enabling new ways to access The Vertical Space to improve our lives from small drones to large aircraft. First, let me congratulate you with some terrific news, your recent Q3 financials. Which I'm sure we'll talk about. And just last week, Delta was highlighted in Forbes World's Best Employers of 2025. So of 900 companies listed in the survey Delta was ranked number two. And that was up four places from the previous years. And congratulations. Well, thank you. It's, an honor to lead this great company and we have a lot of great people making it all happen. Very impressive. So Ed, if I can ask you the first question, we ask all of our guests, what is something that very few in the industry agree with you on? you know, They're coming along. They're coming along. There's, I can tell you a handful of years ago, there were few in the industry that really truly believed that an airplane ticket is an experience that people should be willing to pay a premium for, that you could differentiate on. It's not a commodity that the lowest cost should not be the. Principle determinant for who gets the sale. And Delta's led the charge over many, many years. And what you've seen in the industry since is there's been a significant move afoot towards premium, towards higher quality, the experience, not just in reliability, but the entertainment on the plane. Free fast wifi for your customers, creating great ground experiences. These are all reasons why people choose Delta. And given the fact that we have such a large lead in that space, it was clear for many years people didn't believe us and now they're following us. Ed, your CES presentation, which was terrific, talked about the integrated future experience. Yes. That's playing to that premium. It's playing to any traveler. Yeah. But it's also playing to that premium traveler. Could you talk a little bit about that, given that you've mentioned, Hey, what people didn't agree with me on the past was that the premium can be a focus of an airline. Yeah. Could you talk a little bit about your CES talk for those who haven't seen it, and how you saw the future of the integrated. Travel experience. Yeah. Well, one thing that we, spent some time at the, consumer Electronics Show, presentation was talking about how the experience is evolving and one of the things that we've longed to do, I personally have longed to do here was just figure out how do you tap in and create value from the fact that you have your customers, seated, for an average about three hours a session. They're kind of bored. You've got them all facing in the same direction. They're all seat belted in. They can't go anywhere and you control access to them. if we can't figure out, forget an airline as a marketer, if you can't figure out how to create value for them and value in turn. For your own company? We're pretty lousy. And that was the genesis behind providing free fast wifi connectivity.'cause that was the access point that could not be tapped into so that customers could then reach out and be connected on their journey. we all had wifi for a number of years, but it was a pay for model. Still is for many airlines. As a result, none of the airlines had its sufficient capacity or bandwidth to be able to accommodate more than say, 5% of customers. And we all know the frustrations of paying for wifi and never seeing anything, then popups asking you to pay again. So we've broke that mold and as a result of that entertainment, Partnerships, sponsorships, whether it's T-Mobile, whether it's Paramount, American Express. We just launched with Uber, a premium experience. YouTube TV now is coming to our planes, exclusively. And so it's an immersive experience. So as customers, whether it's through the, the experience of getting on the ground with many of our new lounges and new airport builds from LaGuardia to LA to Detroit and others into the cabin experience through to final destination and beyond, is being seen. Through the eyes of a connected experience. And so it's immersive, it's very engaging and it's attractive, particularly to a younger cohort of travelers. You know, My ambition here is not just to leave Delta as the number one airline. I want to be the number one airline for the next generation, so that this has lasting impact long beyond any of us being here, running this company, setting the foundation for the future. And that's exactly what we see happening. Ed, we often hear that airlines are commoditizing, whether this is in seats or schedules or faires or lounges and et cetera. What's the one thing that Delta does that can't be copied? You're a hundred percent right. Historically. I go back when I started in this industry almost 30 years ago. If we do the surveys, over 75% of the decision making was purely cost. It was a commodity. We've broken outta that pack. There's many things. I'd say the number one thing that Delta does that's unique is that we have great people. Not to say other airlines don't have great people, but our team, our culture. the fact that our people, stand behind what we're trying to deliver to our customers is the only thing candidly in our industry that can't be replicated.'Cause everyone can copy your technology. They can copy their planes, they can, they fly to the same destinations. The only thing they cannot copy is the actual culture of the enterprise and our culture is a fabulous culture. Mr. Woolman who founded the company a hundred years ago said, take good care of your people first who will then take care of your customers. That was a warning sign to the management team that if you ever lose sight of the importance of your own people, you'll never be able to really have the trust and the confidence of your customers. And so we do that in many, many ways. I spend the majority of my time with my own people. Do a lot of customer events, do a lot in the community, but it's the people, side first in celebrating their success, listening to them. I tell folks all the time when they ask me how my day goes, I think I've got a pretty easy day. I can't fly the planes. I don't know how to fix the planes. I have a hard enough time getting through airports and using our technology on the app sometimes. But I know how to care for people and listening to them, getting them the tools they need, the technologies they need, the support they need, the trust that they need, enables them to do a great job, taking care of all of you as customers. Ed you host a Gaining Altitude podcast, and I was just telling you just before we started that, I've listened to all of them, but Michael Bush was, I think, your most recent guest. And Michael Bush gave the results of what your employees think of Delta Air Lines. And I've known Delta for many years. I could not believe of the satisfaction levels of the employees Yeah. So you're clearly doing a great job there. Every, I would encourage everybody to listen to that podcast series, but the most recent is Michael Bush. Thank you. I thought it was terrific, but speaking of focus on people and the differentiation of people. On that note, Jim, can I, jump in with a follow up question, and I think the entrepreneurs in our audience would really appreciate hearing, this from you, Ed, but you know, you lead a hundred thousand people. and on the topic of culture, how do you keep culture from becoming a buzzword? Well, that's a risk. I think there's not many people who truly believe the old saying that culture eats strategy for breakfast, that we've all heard, people tend to think culture's soft culture is the, is the nice to do, not the must do. I could not. Be more adamant that it's the absolute must do. I'll give you today, I started my day in Atlanta, eight o'clock this morning with a group of 750 Delta Frontline employees. Spent an hour and a half with them talking about the business, seeing, in a presentation. And it's not just me, it's our leadership team that follows me through a day and a half session that we talk about all the things that make Delta special. Make our company what it is, things that our employees have the opportunity to then go and unleash. And we bring'em across all different work groups, all different areas of the world, not just locally. And we do it 15 times a year every year. And we've been doing it for 19 years. And I lead each one of them. I've led each one of them for 19 years. And so when you think about culture building, it's a full contact sport. And whether it's in large format there, it's in individual opportunities to see people in the cockpit or in the, uh. Workplace in any fashion, seeing people around. We had, a big centennial bash this past weekend. we took out the Mercedes-Benz Stadium here in Atlanta at 40,000 people and their families joined us for a full day of concerts and fun. And you spend all day with'em, and you just continue to celebrate what makes our company special, which is that relationship that we all are serving together. And that's hard. You know that, candidly the easy thing is the strategy and, putting the network together or that, not that it's easy, it's complex, but the reason culture is so hard,'cause it's every single day. And if you're not willing to do it every day, you're not gonna have necessarily the brand and the company, particularly in the service industry that you, that you see, you don't see me talking a lot about the unique attributes of various, of our airplanes or our different technology streams or the destinations. We, I can do that all day long. I prefer to talk about the people that make it happen and celebrate their success, not mine. That leads nicely into our next question, which is, what's it like to run a major airline? So one is you're talking about you have to be constantly in front of your team, you have to listen to your team, you have to communicate with your team. But what are some of the things about running a major airline that most listening may not necessarily, understand. What are some of the challenges we need to be aware of? Yeah. Well, we operate 5,000 flights a day, every day, and, all over the world, all different time zones. So it's not just 24 7, it's like 46 7,'cause you're, but between the clocks and the different time changes from front to back and so there's never a time when your business is not in active, motion and doing, challenging things. I think the, the thing about running an airline is that you've got so many constituents. You've got a hundred thousand employees. We've got 200 million customers. it's a very public facing. enterprise, this is something that, it's a brand that, that people relate to. They have relationships with the constituencies from the government to the communities, to your shareholders, to to folks, you know, retirees. You're running a large community of people that have some attachment to your brand, your partners around the world. We have a dozen different partners from Air France, KLM, to Korean, to, Aeromexico, all different natures, the personalities are all different and they all come together to create, a larger ecosystem for us. So I think constituent management and stakeholder management is something that has become increasingly more difficult over time. When you think about whether it's, the social media and the fact that any stakeholder at any point can reach any other one and, grab attention to the point where people expectations, we're in a send environment. People are constantly on send and expecting response. So the pace of change as a result is quickened. The technologies of the future with AI and other opportunities, are enhanced. That's why he did CES. As a result, it was unusual for an airline to be doing one of the keynotes for Consumer Electronics Show. And we decided we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it big as we did at the sphere, and so that pace of change is pretty aggressive, and as a result, you have to be comfortable with things going around you and knowing the value drivers and knowing where your focus need be and not get distracted.'Cause it's really easy to get distracted by a lot of shiny objects and a lot of things moving on around you. But those aren't really the levers that are gonna propel you forward. and I think to your point, ed, that culture is what enables a big organization to automatically make the right decisions throughout this. What we're going through is a massive period of rapid change brought about by technology. Yeah. So I imagine that Delta's organization with that culture is navigating technological choices, things that you adopt, choices that you make, and how you evolve the product offering. Because those are so numerous and they're coming so fast, I would imagine that's happening. Yeah, it is. It's a great point. I talked about the big session. I spoke at this morning and I was asked about AI and is that friend or foe essentially, is that something we should be embracing or is something we should be worried about? And it's at Delta. Just to give you, tell you what I told to the individual who asked the question from the floor was that. I think of AI more as augmented intelligence rather than artificial intelligence. I think our industry has had a lot of artificial intelligence over time. We need some real intelligence, and so augmenting the human, and ensuring that the human is still at the centerpiece of all the technology In terms of where we're happening. I talk about companies, which amaze me, where they talk about AI and they lead from. it's gonna allow us to save 4,000 jobs. Right? Or it's gonna, it's like, are you kidding me? this is gonna enable your people who are your most important asset to do their job even better. It's a good guy. It's a friend. It's not gonna replace their jobs. It's gonna let'em have bigger impact. It's gonna allow us to grow faster. It's gonna allow us to be more efficient, more profitable, create more opportunity for the future. But so many companies just talk about, all the tasks that are gonna be eliminated and all the savings and the fewer people, playing to Wall Street rather than paying to your most important constituent, which is your employee Ed. As you sit back, and I mean you, you are always a person who appears very calm in all that you do when you get off the camera and you check a certain set of metrics on how are we doing as an organization. What are the three or four metrics that you always first look at? Well, I get, as you can appreciate, I get a lot of daily metrics, all through the day from early morning to late at night. Uh, one of the first things I see when I wake up is the last thing I see before I, I close my eyes. It gives me a good sense for the business. I'm always checking the reliability ensuring that we've got a 90% plus or minus on time arrival rate. That's really important to me. That gives me a sense that the systems are working in, including obviously your completion rate, which we pride ourselves on having very few cancellations and understanding why when we have cancellations, whether it's weather or some unique aspect to, to understand the health of the business. I watch the cash. One of the things I see each morning is our cash report from the day before. It comes from being in this business for a long time, from a company that went through bankruptcy 20 years ago. Hard to believe to where Delta is today, and I've never lost that focus on cash, making sure that cash is coming in the way we think every day. How much cash came in yesterday and one of the first things I check in the morning. You may not have thought about that, but I do. And as a finance guy, I always wanna make sure I understand the cash. I'll tell you though, another thing, it's not specifically a metric that allows me to stay very, grounded and calm. I'm not as calm sometimes, maybe as I'd like to be, but I think I am is I utilize a practice that is. I had been advised not to do, by some predecessor mentors. people find it's very easy to reach me. I have one cell phone and one email, and that's it. Only one phone. I don't have a multitude of devices. I don't carry around three phones, and I don't have a fake identity. I don't have an alias. You reach me and I insist upon seeing everything that comes to me, and I get thousands of emails a day, thousands and texts and other things. And I, and I want that because I want people to be able to reach me. I want a customer that's having a problem to be able to reach out to the CEO and get help. I want an employee that's having an issue to reach me. I have a customer's having a great experience with a employee to let me know so that, not that I know that I can do something about it, I can celebrate that employee, I can thank that customer, I can get that customer help. And I've got a group of people that sit behind me. I see this stuff and I can, it's almost like playing a point guard. You can dish it out to the people that are in position to make things happen. and it's of any variety and what it allows me to do, Jim, is it. I always know what's going on in my business. One of the hardest things as a CEO is that you get filtered information. You get information that people want, want you, what they want to tell you versus what you need to know. you find when you're running big organizations that good news travels fast and bad news travels very slowly, if at all, and you always want to have a heartbeat. A pulse. I have a pulse every moment of the day giving that people know to reach me, whether, and many times there's something going on in the business that our people may not even know. I've asked what's, one of the leaders, what's going on here? What's going on there? And so that connectedness, which I've worked hard to build over the years, and now I'm very comfortable with. But you gotta stay on. It's, I'm not sitting there constantly with my phone. I've got ways to manage that. It enables me to keep myself feeling like I'm on the ground and people know, and it could be Saturday morning or a Tuesday evening, and a customer's, you they'll get responses pretty quickly usually for me. And they'll say, wow, you've got an amazing bot, or you got an amazing agent, They say, no, it's me. I, I just like to, I like to make sure that's great. People know that I'm in touch and people, and so as a result of that, you develop, a persona of accessibility. Is what in a service business you really want. Ed you've managed through COVID and pilot shortages and supply chain chaos. When did you personally doubt the system the most? I can tell you I never doubted, I struggled, I never doubted, reason I never doubted is I knew the importance of our mission that we would have to figure it out. I didn't know what we were gonna figure out or how. I never doubted that we would get there. And I think that's an important distinction. I think some of the hardest times were the early weeks of the pandemic when none of us had a clue as to what was happening. It didn't seem like anyone in, of any, whether it's government or the medical professionals, anyone really understood what was happening and the conflicting advice and seeing how quickly people were walking away from our business. I'd say the first couple months of COVID were the darkest, by far, you're starting to see people die, people that you know die. I lost my mom early to COVID, un completely unexpectedly, not knowing what happened. those things, put you into a panic mode. I mean, you get incredibly challenged, but then you sit back and you realize the important mission you have and the importance to stay, collected,'cause you've gotta get through this and you've gotta get through this in a way that others, are gonna follow you. they look to us for leadership in this business. And it was a, it was not just a burden, it was a blessing to have that opportunity to lead. in one of the leadership lessons that I, whether it be one of the podcasts I was listening to you or from the Gaining Altitude, you made a comment about, as a leader, be humble and if you don't know all the answers, say you don't have all the answers. Yeah. That's quite unusual for a leader. Yeah. we're paid to answer questions, right. We're paid to give direction. We're not, it's hard to say. I don't know. You guys just asked me a dozen questions and I didn't say I, I don't know any of them. and you know that we're paid to know and we're paid to lead. But when you go through a time like that, it's really important. and by the way, any specific unique issue, it's really important to be transparent and authentic. And let people know that you're not Superman. you're not this all seeing, all knowing, you're learning and people appreciate candor and honesty far more, uh then they'll appreciate, boy, my CEO's on top of it's always got the answers'cause there's none of us do. but the commitment to keeping'em posted on the journey and creating vulnerability is actually a trait that people then come to trust. you trust people, you feel like you can relate to Somebody that's the all-knowing, all being, you've got these mythical figures that have been CEOs in business or other walks in life. Hard to relate to, but when you're going through a struggle and you're walking together and you're leaning on people and you're asking them for help and you're asking them for counsel and you're willing to put your heart out there, it's amazing what you can find. That's terrific. Talk a little bit about technology. We have a lot of people listening right now who are either technologists they're creating it or they have already created it. They see you're leading the aviation transformation in many ways. Could you talk a little bit about the integrated travel experience that Joby may be part of, or Wheels Up may be part of, and how you see the near future and the distant future as it relates to that integrated experience. Yeah. Well, I love the fact that we're sitting a little bit at the epicenter of travel from a larger context, Not just in the air, it's on the ground. You we're exclusive partners with Uber, for example. And, Dara and I announced that at CS also earlier this year. Yes. And the reason being is it's the largest source of travel of trips for them. I think 15% of their journeys are some number like that are to and from airports and wanting to work with a premium provider to help them with their premium delivery to their customers. And getting our customers together, united around a bigger eco system. I think there's so much in common, that you talk about, whether as we continue to expand our journey, wheels up as one end of premium, Delta has had a as 15 years we've been working on premium and Delta is seen now as a premium, the premium provider in our space. Well, what's next? Then? Next is, Wheels Up private aviation and how do you marry private with commercial and make it interchangeable and keep you within the ecosystem and make it easy to access, and affordable. Because one of the things you'll find as we eventually bring Wheels Up onto our platform, right, onto our app, is you'll find price points come way down. Because one of the big things Wheels Up has and any private provider has is how do you fill all these deadhead lakes. They're great when they have a customer, but then they have to reposition their flights, which are, not an insignificant, amount of their flights. I dunno exact numbers. Say Wheels Up has 10,000 members. Well, Delta has 25 million members. Right, right, right. So when you then you think about opening that aperture, it's like, wow. Now they still have work to do to get their reliability and the overall experience at where they'd be. They're going through a re fleeting, and they're doing a good job getting there. So that's one end of it. Joby is on the other end of it. How do you get people from home into our sky club, into onto the seat of our airplane and finding ways to do that, to cut through traffic.'cause again, we're one of the biggest use cases for eVTOL. people are gonna want to, why do they take long trips through major congested markets? Well, they're going to an airport. Where others are going and, I think, don't think, I know this is gonna be the, some of the very first flights that Joby flies are gonna be into some of our major metropolitan areas, whether it's in New York or LA. You saw they just bought Blade as a way to jumpstart that effort and our ability then to actually take our customer right from their, essentially their home, their neighborhood, their, the Verta port, close by their house. Land them on a top of a Delta one Sky Lounge at JFK or LAX and whisk them after they have maybe a bite to eat or some downtime, onto their Delta one seat going to Europe. I mean, it's unique and it just continues to extend that ecosystem. So whether it's in mobility. And there's more to come there or in the future of flight, which, we're partners with Jet Zero and we're excited about what they're doing with the blended wing and opportunities to transform the actual shell itself. There's a lot happening. Ed what's the frontier technology that genuinely excites you? Not for pr, but because you've seen the proof of concept or the prototype? I think there's a few things in the AI space that really does excite me. We, operate, a really a complex set of conditions, and we have a tremendous number of resources dedicated to ensure that we run perfectly every single day. And the cost of that is enormous. People don't appreciate take pilots. We have, 15,000 pilots on our roster. Yeah, we have 5,000 flights a day, right? And so. That means you've got a lot of pilots for a smaller operation. If we could find ways to drive better solutions for our pilots to make them more available, easier to meet their schedule needs. Together with our schedule needs, through better technology and better information. I think our pilots would jump on that because our pilots don't like the fact that they're having sitting on reserve or sitting on a deadhead flight or, it's just so much downtime and wasted time. And it's not just our pilots. It could be our flight attendants, it could be, any number of operations. So. getting your entire resource base better utilized not to work'em harder necessarily, but to work'em smarter, which is a win for them. And it's a win for us, I think would be great. Technology, AI has the capability to do a better job of that. That I'd say that's one thing. Another thing I'm really excited about is in maintenance and thinking about technology. We've worked hard and, everyone knows you go into a maintenance hangar, there's all kinds of workflows, there's all kinds of notes being taken. It's not exactly a digital friendly workspace because our maintenance and technicians they've been at their jobs, their craft for many, many years. They understand it well, but how do you gain the understanding of what they know needs to happen on a plane to the actual work flow and starting to put the right amount of medicine, as our team likes to call it, into our plane, rather than having to file what's, what we have today is a standardized years long checklist of every interval, every time. It's like buying a car and having the user's manual, which we have for our planes, except they, they run for 30 years, not, 30 months or or three, or six years. Technology will unlock that. It'll allow us to put better use of resources at. Better opportunities, more predictive, more anticipatory, and it'll create more reliable, service. But I think it'll also eliminate a lot of the work we do now that we don't find a whole lot of value for, but we can, through evidence and through technology, be able to bring the FAA with us on a journey to show them how to realign work patterns. And this is an airline with a thousand planes, so we got a lot of work we're doing. We're not sure, the overall, high-end effectiveness of what we're doing. It's a very expensive resource. So I think these are high-end tasks and high-end challenges could take us years to figure out, but I think we will figure it out and we'll be better, we'll be more effective and more efficient, and it'll make our employees jobs and life much easier too. If we look at a more granular level with entrepreneurs on the line, what's top three on your wishlist of things that are unsolved pain points today that you'd like entrepreneurs to go and solve that would create immediate value delta? Oh, we have a lot of those already, being worked on, I just mentioned a couple. How do you improve the overall, efficiency, not in terms of a productivity or a cost metric, but also the efficiency of the operations. The functionality of the operations, given that you have to put so many resources around getting a flight off the ground and whether it's reserved pilots sitting on the ground in case one of the pilots gets sick, or you, or, there's a schedule change that causes, a plane not to be where you thought it was going to be. That, six weeks out you would've never known. And so there's a tremendous amount of redundancy that's captured in what we do in any way we can reduce, whether it's pilots, whether it's with our maintenance teams. Any way we can reduce the amount of redundancies that are embedded into the operation, that could enhance safety, enhance reliability, enhance cost performance, I think is a huge home. Ed, you just reported some very strong financials. Could you talk about your Q3 results? Yeah, we were proud of our team. last week we reported a profit of$1.5 billion. The thing about those results, Jim, that I was most impressed, that's gonna represent 60% of overall industry profits for the quarter. One airline that has 20% market share yet has 60% of the profits. That's quite a statement about the value our team is creating, for not just our shareholders, but our customers themselves.'Cause our customers are choosing them through the premiums they're paying us, for that. We also generate significant amount of cash, free cash. This is a business that always is capital intensive, and we've taken the long view and we realize that we have to be very balanced in what we're investing in and what we're paying risk down through our balance sheet. And you asked me earlier, what are one of the things that, people think can't, you can't do or don't believe me, or I'm a disagreement. I believe Delta can have a fortress balance sheet that's investible by investors to the point where we're gonna get our debt paid down to close to zero, effectively, and then still have that cash coming. Just think about, and by the way, it won't be completely zero, but it'll be effectively, say one times, one times EBITDAR, which is probably as close to zero as you'd wanna get in running a big enterprise like this. And then just think what you can do with that cash so that, not that we're trying to deliver the balance sheet for delivered sake. We're in a business that we know is gonna face challenges in the future. We just don't know what they are. Historically, the airlines have been viewed as, as highly cyclical, is because they're vulnerable to the risks of the cycle, whether it's geopolitical, whether it's a fuel risk. It could be a, health risk. You don't have to have a pandemic. You could have with spur flow or other scares that we've seen over time. Give our company a chance to play offense, not defense, to be opportunistic when those times happen, and I think that's the next frontier of how we grow our enterprise. Ed, when you come out with such great results, how much is Wall Street giving you credit for your view of the integrated travel experience? Do you see that reflecting your valutions? You would think given your distinct and unique vision, you had received some benefit from that. How do they view that on the Wall Street? They're, we've also, as an industry created a lot of value destruction over time. And so I acknowledge that. Let me back up. From 2009 to 2019, that decade, 2009, we bought and merged with Northwest and, led up right up to the start richest before the pandemic. Our stock price in 2009 was around$6, 2019 at$60 a 10 x growth over that last decade. So we've shown that we can do it. Then of course, what happened, including, Mr. Buffet comes in as our largest shareholder after saying he'd never again invested in airlines. He invested in Delta was his biggest airline holding, and he was our single largest shareholder. And then what happens, the pandemic happens and it's all destroyed. So the thing about investing in our business that, long-term investors look at is if you know the business well, it's, it's investible. You know, you gotta again, watch it and you gotta be knowledgeable about it.'Cause things can happen that can change quickly. Change those fortunes and understanding that and I come back, as I was just saying, is that what's the last risk that you can actually, that's within your control, people I think there's a lot of things that are outside of control, which I mentioned externalities that are, our balance sheet is within our control. If we focus on getting to that fortress balance sheet so when the next whatever happens, Wall Street and the shareholders aren't the one bearing the costs is actually, we will be able to manage through that a lot easier than, than others will. Unlike most of the airline industry, which lives in quarters, you seem to think in decades, as we've just discussed, and it's, bearing fruit. What are some of the bets that you are making now that Wall Street doesn't yet understand? Well, I think one of the things that's exciting to me is in our second century, the growth of international flight, international opportunity. We look at our business, we tend to be all of the airlines here in the US we're more domestic than truly international. Delta, for example, two thirds of our revenue is domestic sourced. One third is international. You look around the domestic landscape, air travel is highly congested. There's flights any hour of the day taking you almost anywhere you want to go. It's pretty easy to access. Limited by air traffic control and those constraints, which you guys are well familiar with in terms of the limitations of the current ATC environment. So not a lot of growth that you're gonna find in the domestic environment. So people ask, where's you to be a, to get back Jim's question, how are you gonna grow your enterprise value? Well, you gotta be a growth company in order to do that. And then I tell people, if you consider that only one in five people in the world have ever stepped foot on an airplane, those that hadn't heard that statistic, they stop in their tracks, say, really? Because we take it for granted here. Only one in five people have ever touched an airplane. And that tells you where you need to go internationally, many destinations Today, Delta doesn't fly to India. We don't fly direct, or even through a connection. We need to go to India, the most populous, fastest growing country in the world. We don't fly to the Middle East. We need to fly there. We don't fly to many parts of the world. And so the challenge back to us is how do you do that affordably? How do you make it accessible? How do you make it sustainable? And how do you find ways to better expand your purpose and your vision for the future to the world. Not just, and people might think that's a futuristic, crazy idea. Go back a hundred years ago to that crop duster. Could Mr. Woolman, when he started with that crop duster have envisioned being the world's most powerful, largest airline. I doubt it. And we shouldn't be unencumbered when we think about the vision for the future to take on those types of challenges. And that's what we're doing. We're building partnerships and relationships, and whether it's in India, whether it's in Saudi Arabia and other places, to be able to go do this. What's the boldest internal debate happening at Delta right now? I think it's the trade off, between, continuing to invest hard that vision, which is exciting. And by the way, that vision's not just aircraft. It's, again, continued ground experience, here in Atlanta, I get stopped almost every day saying, why don't we have a Delta one lounge in Atlanta? And, the, all the higher end amenities. So the constant need for capital to continue to expand the experience of today and tomorrow with a need to keep paying that balance sheet down. They keep getting that down. And that's the balance that you keep. And again, the next couple years, those conversations will be a lot easier. But I think right now it's the, the struggle for, capital allocation Ed. When you, go to your team and you say, listen, don't just compare us, for example, to the other airlines. I want you to think differently, and I wanna look at other companies Yeah. Or other industries to compare us to. Who are those other companies or industries that you want to be compared with as you look forward for the next 10 years? Yeah. I want us to be seen as one of the very best experiential, brand service companies, consumer brands in the world. When we talk about that, I say look at the Fortune Most Admired Companies list, that they put out annually. And I think that's a pretty good place to start and think about how people think about and because these are broad based surveys, these are surveys. They're not pay for play. You can't just buy your way onto the list. You actually have to, which a lot by the way, award, warn your leaders. There's a lot. Particularly aviation metrics, lists out there that you can do pay for play a little bit, but not there. And look at where we sit. For the last two years running, we've been the 11th most admired company in the world. Pretty heady stuff. And so, no kidding. So you think about the company that we're in and whether it is, a high-end tech company or an Amazon. Or an American Express who's a close partner, what makes them great? Those are the things that I inspire. Too easy to use, scalable, a brand that people love, and companies that understand why their customers love their brand.'cause I think there's a lot of companies out there that aspire to be loved, but they're not quite sure that they can make a compelling vision. Why you should love us versus anyone else. And Delta's done that. I look at that list of top 100 on the Fortune Most Admired there's a company on there that we all know well, and I've looked up for years. Singapore Airlines love brand. They're number 28 and Delta's number 11. And so I think that's a piece of it. I think another piece of it, and it gets back to the international expansion, in our industry, there's airlines that, around the world that, they're national champions. Air France has France and the Germans have Lufthansa, and you go to Dubai and it's Emirates or you go to all around the world and the US we just we got a bunch of airlines and they all fly in they fly out and everybody comes and tries to, to fly'cause the US is richest economy in the world. I love for Delta to be the airline that's increasingly seen as the national, or global champion, not just the domestic, national champion. And that also to me is inspiring. And just following up on this, on Jim's question about this expanding competitive landscape in a way, you have, not just the major carriers, but you know, you're up against companies like, Amazon flying its own cargo network or SpaceX talking about suborbital passenger routes at some point. Tech companies, which are redefining customer expectations. Which of those emerging players, if any, do you watch most closely and who are you really up against in the next decade? I watch Amazon pretty carefully'cause I think that's, first of all, it's a company I really admire and I fortunate enough to know the leadership there quite well, and we have a very good relationship with Amazon. We're on AWS for example, while our most of our technology stack and really glad we are. It's not that you watch necessarily the specifics of what they do, it's the how they do it and how they think and how they, they approach, the market. There's a boldness of fearlessness, to go and they understand their, the advantage they create it's pretty powerful. I look at a company like Disney and see while, there's, they've had challenges over recent years, they're still an amazing, consumer brand that people love. And I dare anyone to, to mention the word Disney to a kid and not, evoke a big smile. I want Delta to, say Delta's going Delta trip and just people to smile. I mean, that's a powerful brand and there's a lot of substance that sits against that. But it all comes back to me to be the experience. It's the experience that matters and the more in which our people make that experience come to life on planes through their service. That's where I'm, focused. But I know many of those companies, many of those leaders. Well, and I'd like to spend a lot, I do spend a lot of time, learning from them. Ed we have a lot of entrepreneurs in the line right now who, let's say they have the technology that help you with some of the challenges that you, and opportunities to be able to help Delta in the future. What advice would you give to them in bringing their technology to arguably one of the toughest organizations and industries to bring technology to? What advice would you have for them? Well, we have our own, little Venture Group, it's called the Hangar. it's, we run alongside Georgia Tech there, and we've done it for years and it's been a way for startup, technologists to, to get a foothold and get access to some smart, affordable talent and ability to prove it here in Atlanta. And we have any number of small startups here in the local area that we and beyond it's not just local, it's turned it domestically that we do work with. And, you know, anyone looking for ways to, they have a great idea. and I'm, and by the way, we have lots of great ideas. I don't need great ideas. I need great solutions. not great ideas. send it to ed.bastion@delta.com. It's, that's, there's your, that's my, there you go. That's my email and I only have one and, send it to me and I'll get you in touch with somebody, I promise. That's great. Ed, the next 10 years, how do you view it, in the industry and how do you see industries coming together? Well, our industry's really interesting, Jim. It's, we're going through a really disruptive period and for all the strength that we talked about, Delta in our business model, the majority of the, the airlines in the US are commercial airlines are struggling. where They were, keenly focused on their business model driving a commodity difference and a lower price point where a lot of the outside's growth was going. How I think about it because we've raised the ceiling of possibility within the airline space, people are starting to drift up and there's a lot of airlines that are still anchored down here. Customers have drifted higher,'cause people see, it's not just that it's a premium experience, it's a premium experience it's also a great value, is what we're delivering. And the airlines that don't have an experience that people attach other than just, getting me from point A to point B safely. There's not a lot of people left in that quadrant. There are people, but they're also, they don't have, the means, the capability to, or the resources to avail themselves to that product. So I think we're looking the next several years, it's gonna be a disruptive period. I think they thought it was a K shaped or different type of consumer. We're moving forward. That's why I think you see many of the larger airlines, whether it's United, American, Southwest, all trying to move in that direction. Alaska and others, I think you've got an opportun as, as I said, for international, expansion and growth that we can take a lead on.'Cause there's many places we don't go to today where our brand is, our partners go to, but we don't and the opportunity to bring Delta, to some of those parts of the world is pretty exciting to me. And, I think this is a time where I, you don't know what's coming next and so I think there's a sense of urgency for us to get still further behind the pandemic to get our organizations in a really good place.'Cause there will be something happening and whether it's the AI bubble people talk about and the AI bubble imploding, which I think will happen by the way. Because it's impossible with all the capital and all the resources that, whether it's on the grid or data center, hyperscalers or these seven or eight large, tech companies that are chasing to be the next frontier of AI. They're all competing for the same thing. And I'm not sure that there's enough customer there or enough customer need for everything that's being built for them. And that's gonna, there's gonna be a day of reckoning. I wanna make sure we kind of slide past that. We don't get trapped by that. Ed, we just have a minute left. Who does Ed Bastian listen to? Who do you pay attention to, whether it be in our industry or whether it be, in global business or maybe outside of business? Who do you give the most time to? That's a great question. I try to listen to my team. I mean, it's, I'm not copping out there. I really do. I think it's important. You listen, you're a great team. I think it's important you listen to people who know you best. I use this expression a lot, which my mother taught me. You have two ears and one mouth and use'em accordingly. And as leaders, as we were saying, we're always on send, we're always trying to give instruction or direction. And we don't take enough time to really understand. And when you're looking at a period where there's a lot of change coming. And the pace of change seems to be, it is not, seems, it is accelerating at a faster pace. You really need to stay close. So I think the team itself, to me is someone I definitely listen to and, I'm willing to be told we're, I'm going too fast or going too slow. And how to course correct if necessary. I've got a few close friends that, I've got lots of friends, but, a couple really close friends that I spend time talking to, from all different walks not necessarily in the business. I've got one or two, church pastors I'm particularly close to that kind keep me grounded, keep my head in the game, realize that, this is not, I may have a lot of. Current success, but that doesn't really mean anything it's how you deploy it that, that matters. And it just keeps me grounded. It keeps me humble. I think humility is a really important part of leadership and, it's hard. It's hard when you've got everyone there trying to please you and to be a leader, that people are still willing to, to watch and follow. But humility is a really important part. And so that, that's that aspect of me. And I'll tell you, my kids, my kids, know me better than anybody and they're willing to tell me and laugh at me and laugh with me, and but you know, I draw sources of information from all sorts of places. I, I don't, that's why I'm not gonna give you any names of people because I don't want to anyone to feel like, well, what about me? I'm a huge believer in mentorship. I know there's no way I got here without some great leaders, great mentors who mentored me and was Frank Blake or Richard Anderson or Jerry Grinstein, Ambassador Andy Young, here in Atlanta, men that have poured so much time into me that's molded me to who I am, spending my time and I then, and by the way, continue to talk to all of them and others. It's really important to, to respect that and it's a responsibility to get back and you're mentoring the next generation accordingly. Ed, you've been very generous with your time. We really appreciate it. Our guests say thank you as well. Thanks very much, Ed Bastian. Thank you, Jim. I enjoyed it as well. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ed.