Delta Air Lines continued to paint a positive picture of corporate travel demand for the second quarter, with executives on a Thursday morning earnings call noting that managed corporate travel volume grew by “double digits” year over year.
“As the business carrier of choice, Delta benefited from double-digit volume growth in this high-value segment with broad demand and growth across all sectors,” Delta president Glen Hauenstein said during the call. He did not elaborate, but in an earnings release, Delta said that it was sixth month in a row for double-digit percentage volume growth for the segment.
The carrier expects business travel volume growth to continue, “with 90 percent of companies in our recent corporate survey saying they intend to maintain or increase travel volumes in the back half of the year,” Hauenstein continued. That figure is the same as what the carrier’s corporate clients projected in a prior surveyfor the second quarter.
Hauenstein noted Delta’s September bookings are “substantially better than the base we had going into July and August at minus 60 days … and [we’re] going back into a more normalized business season where business tends to pick up from August to September.”
Q2 Metrics
Delta reported second-quarter passenger revenue of $13.8 billion, up 5 percent year over year. Total revenue was up 7 percent to nearly $16.7 billion.
The carrier reported second-quarter net income of $1.3 billion, down from the more than $1.8 billion reported a year prior.
Second-quarter average capacity increased 8 percent compared with Q2 2023. Domestic capacity also was up 8 percent, with capacity in the Atlantic region up 2 percent, Latin America up 19 percent and the Pacific region up 30 percent, year over year. Delta projects third-quarter capacity to increase 5 percent to 6 percent.
The carrier’s average second-quarter fuel price was $2.64 per gallon, below its previous projection. Fuel-price estimates for the third quarter are $2.60 to $2.80 per gallon.
Delta projects third-quarter revenue of $14.8 billion to $15.1 billion, a 2 percent to 4 percent year-over-year increase.
