Delta's Investor Day reveals it's really a credit card company
All remaining passengers may now board... It's a pretty un-exclusive group that gets to show up at Delta's Investor Day: Any Delta shareholder. The airline uses the opportunity to humble-brag its most impressive company highlights. Here are some stats investors are proud of:
- Your legs get less room: Average seats per aircraft jumped from 97 to 127 over the last decade. And probably not just because the planes got bigger.
- At least the planes are more environmentally efficient: The company emits 11% fewer C02 emissions overall than it did in 2005.
Flight update: Delta is really a credit card company... We couldn't stop staring at slide #24 in the Investor Day deck — Delta's co-branded credit card with American Express is the airline's true profit puppy:
- 8% of all Amex spending in 2018 was on Delta.
- That Delta/AmEx card earned Delta $1.4B in 2010 — and a whopping $4B this year.
- Now the AmEx card is estimated to bring in 35% of Delta's profits.
Delta is a perfect card candidate... because its customers spend lots on it. If you splurge on a few LAX-JFK flights home every year, you'd prefer to use the airline card that's boosting your points situation. Delta owns a big chunk of its close to 200M customers' wallets — and the credit card is where it makes money off them.