Delta Air Lines Senior Vice President, Alliances & International, Perry Cantarutti at CAPA’s Americas Aviation Summit 2023

Transcript

Perry Cantarutti:Yeah, so Asia is late to reopen post-pandemic, but it is definitely progressing quickly. Like we've seen in other markets, there's a lot of pent-up demand, and that's obviously fueling some of the early booking strength that we see. So as we've been adding capacity, and we're probably now about 70% restored on the transpacific market, we see really robust booking patterns, you know, strong demand, and we feel good about being at a flying a full schedule by the end of 2024. So on the North Atlantic, the the the Interest in leisure destinations, which for us we think of Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece, has really been incredible. Our revenue in those markets will be more than double in 2023 than what it was in 2019. And you know, it's a lot of individual travelers. Obviously, it's not corporate. Demand, which also reflects kind of a shift in the composition of who's traveling and the reason, the purpose for, you know, trips that people are taking. So we always had a big presence in Southern Europe, but it will be bigger than ever in 2023. We feel a lot better about the state of preparation in European airports for '23. You know, if you think back to 2022, we had the Omicron variant that really sort of ravaged the industry for Q1. And then in about April of '22, you know, as the Omicron receded into the history, demand came back so fast that— and the summer was incredible and, you know, honestly just outstripped the capacity of the infrastructure. In particular in Europe, Schiphol, CDG, not so much CDG, but especially Schiphol and to a certain extent London. A lot of, you know, focus since then to make sure that the airports are well prepared. In Amsterdam, which is one that's of course very sensitive for Delta because it's our biggest hub outside of the US, normally in the peak period we'd have 21 flights a day there. We know they've hired staff at KLM. The airport authority has hired 850 new security screeners. There are more border police. So we feel like, you know, the airports are much, much better prepared. You know, I think that it is— we are seeing a fairly long-term change in behavior. If you pull back and look at how people are spending their money, And you look at credit card billings and that sort of thing, you see that there's a notable trend that people are spending less on things and more on experiences and services. It's that same kind of focus that's driving the restaurant business and upscale hotels. And I don't see that going away anytime soon. So, you know, and people, the travel is It's essential for people's lives. I think people have concluded after the pandemic they want to be out, they want to go see the world, they want to be with other people, and they want to treat themselves and make that experience as, you know, enjoyable and special as possible. Thank you.

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