Skift Take
Delta CEO Ed Bastian, who left the company briefly in 2005, loves to tell the story about why he quit. At the time, Delta was pursuing a discount strategy that he didn’t like. Not long after he returned, Delta made aggressive moves for premium traffic, which has made it considerable money since with new efforts under way.
After Covid-19 hit, some wondered whether this pandemic, a Black Swan event no one expected, would change the airline passenger experience forever, altering what customers expected on board and at the airport. But Delta Air Lines reports it is nearly business as usual, even as variants continue to spread, an executive said this week in an interview.
Cleanliness, while important, no longer drives as much preference as earlier in the pandemic, said Ranjan Goswami, senior vice president for customer experience. Instead, despite all the change and upheaval, the airline’s customers say they want the same stuff as in pre-pandemic times — faster Wi-Fi with streaming capability, on-time performance, and a more premium, more consistent experience, with hot food in business class. Customers also want more self-service options and digital tools so they can solve problems without speaking to an airport agent.
“People are getting back to, ‘Hey, I need to be on time,’” Goswami said. “Whereas before it was about, ‘I want the seat free next to me,’ now it’s about going back to the hard product.”
Premium Leisure Bet
Delta made considerable investments in passenger experience during the pandemic, including funding major improvement projects at several key airports, including Los Angeles. These moves now appear prescient but did not always seem like a shrewd investment. Indeed, Skift in its 2022 Megatrends report identified the rise of premium air travel as one of the major travel trends evolving this year.
Even in a worst-case scenario, few insiders believed traffic…