Still, the airline offered a hopeful message, saying it expects the impact of Omicron on its operations will be over within the next 60 days. That should allowing Delta to return to profitability by March and to continue to make money throughout the summer travel season.
“The recent rise in Covid cases associated with the Omicron variant is expected to impact the pace of demand recovery early in the quarter, with recovery momentum resuming from President’s Day weekend forward,” said Glen Hauenstein, Delta’s president.
Even with the profitable second half, the company posted a full-year loss of $408 million, excluding special items, because of deep first-half losses. But Delta announced Thursday it will pay employees a total of $108 million in profit-sharing bonuses, based on the earnings in the second half.
“As always, our people drove this success, which is why we were happy to announce this morning a special profit-sharing payment for all eligible employees,” said CEO Ed Bastian.
“We’re doing much much better than we were through the early part of the holiday period,” Bastian said in an interview Thursday on CNBC. He said about 8,000 Delta employees were infected by the virus, or nearly 10% of its staff.
He said case counts are coming way down in the last week and that so have flight cancellations, which have averaged 1% of scheduled flights over the last seven days compared to 5% or more during the holiday period. On Wednesday there were only two flights canceled out of 2,500 scheduled flights due to staffing shortages caused by Omicron.
“We believe the worst is behind us,” he said.
Three months ago, the company had warned it expected a fourth-quarter loss because of rising fuel prices. But fuel prices rose less than Delta had feared, and holiday travel was stronger than it had expected.
Source : Nbcnewyork