Just like Corona beer, Delta Air Lines can now get associated with COVID and its variants. Could this be good or bad news? The airline’s CEO Ed Bastian said that they don’t want to call the delta variant by its WHO name. Instead, he said that “We just call it the variant”.
Dr. Henry Ting who is Delta’s chief health officer even jokingly tweeted that they prefer to call it “the B.1.617.2 variant since that is much more simple to say and remember”.
During the early days of the pandemic, Corona, the Mexican beer company was the butt of jokes. The tagline “it’s corona time” was even used online as part of memes.
Despite the potential bad publicity of having the same name as the more contagious COVID variant, Delta is on its way to recovery. Domestic leisure demand has picked up since spring. As more people complete their vaccine doses, travelers are now more than happy to travel.
The airline had a $652 million profit breaking the five consecutive quarters of losses. One of the main reasons is the federal aid that the industry received. This allowed Delta to offset some of its costs. However, the airline expects to see profits in the second half of the year even without federal aid.
According to the airline, domestic leisure travel has completely recovered. They even surpassed their initial forecast when it comes to their net cash sales.
Compared to last year, Delta and other airlines are now having labor shortage problems due to the high demand from travelers. Delta announced last month that it is going to hire 1,000 reservation agents and even 1,000 pilots by next year.
Ed Bastian said that “Looking forward, we are harnessing the power of our differentiated brand and resilient competitive advantages to drive towards sustainable profitability in the second half of 2021 and enable long-term value creation”.
Bastian also said that the carrier hasn’t “seen any impact at all” on bookings because of the delta variant.
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