Delta Airlines CEO Makes Surprising Comments About Current State of Air Travel
Where our wallets are concerned, the last few years have been tough, to say the least. Everyone seems to be feeling the strain brought on by massive inflation, making just about everything we buy more expensive, whether that's groceries or even real estate. Travel isn't any cheaper, either; the price of plane tickets seems to be climbing too, often without any real increase in the quality of our travel experience. And when it comes to the news, we've heard a lot of doom and gloom about the economy and impending recession.
But apparently, there's at least one business leader out there who isn't concerned about the impact this could have on profits, and he's not afraid to say it. In fact, Delta's CEO seems downright optimistic about what the future holds, leaving a lot of people calling him "out of touch."
On Tuesday, October 24, the official Bloomberg Business TikTok account shared a clip of Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian talking about the recession, and why he's so sure that things will only continue to get better for the company from here: The type of consumers he's targeting still have plenty of cash to spend.
"We have a consumer in our country that is reasonably in good shape, particularly as you get into the upper end of the income strata, in our business, specifically air travel," he said. "75 percent of our revenues come from the top 40 percent of consumers — consumers that have household earnings of $100,000 a year or greater."
He went on to share that Delta's target consumer is the group of people who managed to come out of the pandemic relatively financially unscathed, with earnings on real estate investments and healthy savings accounts.
Obviously, this isn't even reality for most people living in the US (let alone globally), but he does have a point — that is the group of consumers he's targeting. Delta flights are typically more expensive than ones you'd find on other airlines like Southwest or those that cater to a super tight budget like Spirit Airlines. But still, people didn't hold back their feelings on this one.
"What I heard: 'We don't care about the lower class, since they can't afford us,'" one person wrote.
Another commenter added, "I think he said the quiet part out loud."
The consumer Delta is aiming for is their choice to make, but those of us who travel can vote with our wallets when it comes to how we feel about this kind of attitude, especially after the airline just made major changes to SkyMiles that many loyal customers weren't happy about. If only the goal was to make air travel more accessible to all, and not less.
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