By Chris Isidore, CNN Business
RALEIGH-DURHAM AIRPORT – Travel is booming, and Delta Air Lines boosted ticket prices. That helped the company weather higher fuel costs in the first quarter, and Delta believes it can turn a profit in the second quarter.
The company reported an adjusted net loss of $784 million in the first quarter, which was about $50 million less than Wall Street analysts had expected. Its revenue of $9.3 billion came in about $400 million higher than forecasts. The company said it was profitable in March.
Demand for travel is so strong right now that CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC that March was Delta’s best month ever for bookings — both for flights in March itself and for upcoming travel.
“Demand is phenomenal,” he said on CNBC. “This is continuing in April. Consumers are ready to go.”
“There are clear signs of pent-up demand for travel and experiences as consumers’ spending shifts from goods to services and experiences, travel restrictions lift and business travelers continue to return to the skies,” he told investors on a conference call later Wednesday morning.
Rebound in demand
Bastian said that demand for travel at the beginning of the quarter was negatively affected by the surge of Covid cases from the Omicron variant, but that demand rebounded quickly as that surge started to subside in mid-February. He added that there has been no sign so far of a negative impact on travel caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
That strong demand has translated into fuller planes and higher fares. Unit revenue, a measure of airfares, should be up more than 10% in the second quarter compared to same period of 2019, Delta anticipates. Its unit revenue in March was above that of March 2019, the first month since the start of the pandemic that the airline has achieved a positive comparison.
“We are successfully recapturing a significant portion of the run-up in fuel,” Bastian told…