Q1 call
 

Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) will hold a live conference call and webcast to discuss its March quarter 2026 financial results at 10 a.m. ET, Wednesday, April 8, 2026.

https://ir.delta.com/news/news-details/2026/Delta-Air-Lines-Announces-Webcast-of-March-Quarter-2026-Financial-Results/default.aspx

Anyone got any predictions?

Multiple "Operational challenges" we could never see coming or prepare better for, let alone quickly recover from despite lessons learned 2 years ago?

Probably blame our contract.

Underperformed the initial guidance due to IROPs, war/fuel with a revised guide for 2026. This will be bad because… sect. 6. But really I think that will be the theme. Still some profit but the comp to last year will tell the tale.

We seemed to kick the can for our “big” year the last couple and as long as negotiations are going on the optimism will be tempered and 1/27 will be the real report to watch. With a big profit they will have less leverage post amendable date. This is also why I think they pushed for a big 2025. The PWA will go into 28 IMHO.

I'm not so sure. The amount of pressure 23M7 is putting on the operation (and bottom line) is pretty sizable. Of course, it depends on our 'ask', but I think they will be almost desperate to address/'fix' 23M7-related issues, and if we play it smart, we will extract a solid, on time contract as a result. Time is potentially on our side, for once.

"It's across all segments, covering corporate, covering international, covering premium leisure, covering main cabin, covering our domestic system," Bastian said. "We're seeing strength in every market that we look at."

Bastian noted that eight of Delta's top 10 days for ticket sales happened this year, five of them since the start of the war.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/...ooking-flights

Ed says things are going well.

That is an accurate quote but when has ED ever said things are going poorly. It’s all relative to the guidance. The sentiment will be tempered. They never say things suck until they file for bankruptcy. They can control profits with expenditures and give mediocre returns forecasts. As long as they don’t have a terrible YOY comp or a losing Q the shareholders will be placated. If we had a stellar 2025 (as planned) then the comps would look weak but I think we will be on par with some downward revision to the guidance for real world events. That doesn’t hurt them in negotiations because they can say we aren’t making as much money as expected, and is excusable for investors if we stay #1 each Q.

Whatever our ask is, double it.

And can we put personel stuff in there too? I’d like to see the top 12 in flt ops fired. Why 12? Cause we could call them the dirty dozen. Time to clean house!

Could be people buying trips they were already planning thinking fuel price increases will increase ticket prices soon.

as long as tb12 is still getting paid, I’m good.

This. I think you’ll see a softening of demand in Q2.

The current spot price for jet fuel is 4.56 per gallon. It was 2.00 a gallon in Dec. Doesn’t matter how many tickets you sell unless you raise fares substantially you won’t be making money. Delta’s average fuel price in 2025 was 2.30 a gallon for a net 2025 fuel bill of 9.8 billion dollars. Average spot price for fuel in 2025 was 2.11 per gallon.

True, but... We won't know if this current spike in prices is persistent or just a flash in the pan for a bit yet. Obviously, if it stays high, it will have large ramifications. We just don't know that yet.

Plan, prepare? Sure. Panic? Not time for that yet, if ever.

Panic is not a very good business strategy… but I just fly planes.

Most experts from both “sides” of the political spectrum aren’t seeing a scenario in which the current conflict will be over quickly. Trump can call this a, “limited excursion”, but Iran views this as total war and their regime won’t be ousted anytime soon.

The Strait will remain threatened unless we put boots on the ground. It cannot be secured from the air alone. Boots on the ground cause further spiraling and deeper involvement.

We have a 4-6 week cushion from the release of the SPR. After that the American economy will be far less insulated. If this persists for months then we’ll see large disruption of supply chains ala Covid-era and massive inflation ala post-Covid… We aren’t in panic mode yet, but it sure does feel a lot like we’re all doing our best to be positive about something that there just isn’t much reason to feel positive about.

Maybe a few. But I can’t imagine mass quantities of people buying tix as a forward looking petro arbitrage pseudo investment play.

Inflation hasn’t left, but we will start feeling it more than before. Most Americans are struggling, but we loveeeee to buy stuff.

Even if fuel stays high and some travel dwindles, it could still not be that bad for some airlines. Oil went to the inflation adjusted equivalent of around $220/bbl, during a financial crisis and a recession, with multiple large wars going on, a merger happening, and the fleet of planes most legacies had (especially DL) were MUCH less efficient, with the industry less consolidated. And no refinery either.

Hundreds of 88/DC9/more 757’s than today, 4 engine whales, no NEO’s or MAX’s (industry wide) and the skies darkened with grossly inefficient 50 seat RJ’s, a ruthless and irrational yield trashing ULCC in ATL, one exceptionally well run LCC with a multi billion dollar fuel hedging head start with big ambitions to bury a legacy or two, all with the industry awash in venture capital for any and every start up fantasy imaginable (domestic, premium international, etc) for rich people who like to play with airplanes.

Yet the industry survived and became stronger than ever. Most attribute the now semi-common “capacity discipline” mentality to that era as well. And at least one ULCC went under because of it (SkyBus, which, were it not for that, could have hundreds of planes by now). No one is saying there’s not some headwinds at the moment. But the industry has never, nor will ever, ride only the boom years and nothing else. IMO no one should be lifting the guard on the panic button yet. Well except maybe the 23M7 farmers lol.

https://www.reuters.com/business/uni...ar-2026-03-20/

Kirby obviously sees longer term effects from all of this. Makes sense they'd be the first to cut as they're the one expanding the most.

I'm going to be laughing in 6 months when oil is back down again and pulling these nuggets of panikan posts from the past to remind you how silly you are.

You all need to relax and breathe. Get outside enjoy life, this will pass as a blip on the radar

Kirby was banking on massive expansion, he's only pulling back 5% - hardly earth shattering

I'm not panicking at all! I don't see furloughs or anything. Just less or no profit sharing and maybe less or no hiring. Not a big deal. Not everything is some extreme thing. You need to chill bro.

Fuel prices up, North America less up because we're insulated, Ticket prices up, Delta least affected

All that's the NBD, but there's the nightmare fuel in the broader economy. Global oil people are saying the sky is falling and the politicians have no clue how bad it's about to get. That's what I'm hearing...big spike in crude prices coming soon and lasting YEARS. That's going to lead to massive global inflation and chop the legs out from under an ailing economy. Layoffs across all industries combined with higher ticket prices leads to drastic demand reduction. AAL barely profitable in the best of times immediately files for bankruptcy and goes begging the government for a bailout. UAL sees a competitive disadvantage to not also declaring bankruptcy, and we're all taking haircuts and furloughs.

I don't think all that's going to happen, but that's the toilet bowl of misery we hopefully don't dip to deep into. Right now, we're still in good shape and it's not so much about the direct effect of higher oil, but the second/third/etc order effects within the economy that is going to be the outcome.

Doomers may want to check DLNet.

sounds like demand is there and better than predicted revenue.

In the short term, yes. Longer term if there are major disruptions to the availability and/or cost of all the various components that pass through the straight (not just oil, but natural gas, fertilizer, helium, etc) then the entire world economy could be in for some prolonged pain.

I don’t think anyone here is really concerned about Q1 or 2 this year. The back half of this year and into 2027 are very much at risk. The worst case scenarios may not play out, but there is certainly a chance that they do.

The people buying up airline tickets are the same people with carts full of toilet paper in 2020. It's panic buying and we will have an unforseen drop in demand the next two quarters.

shouldn’t you be on a sailboat reading a book somewhere? in no world could i ever imagine caring so much about a past life as you do.

I can't see what incentive the Iranians have at this point to stop fighting, absent lots of boots on the ground. With every strike by the US and Israel, there is less and less for Iran to lose.

They only need to maintain a modest capability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the water desalination plants and the oil and gas infrastructure of neighboring countries. The Iranians have a decentralized military; cutting off the head of the snake just makes them more difficult to deal with.

Iran still hasn't deployed their cyber warfare capabilities or the Houthis. I assume they have cells in many Western countries too; it won't take much to inflict significant pain on soft targets.

There is a reason this has never been attempted before.

If we just stop talking about it it will POOF! go away…….

huh? panic buying vacations to lock in before massive price increases that may likely not happen? weird

What's weird is pilots predicting higher oil prices who are surprised about panic buying before prices go up.

https://thepointsguy.com/news/airfar...2026/?hl=en-US

Global Cooling, Delta a boutique 7,000 pilot airline, business travel is dead forever/Zoom for all my friends, no more toilet paper, Peak oil, Y2K. Take your pick of alarmist doom and gloom. You have almost no control over (other than not engaging in the hysterics) most of this anyway, so tuning it out isn't necessarily a bad idea for most.

Succinctly put.

It's his passive aggressive way of saying "I told you so". Why or what he tells you or why it is so is irrelevant to him.

Is that why almost everything he says is either wrong or irrelevant to seniority list pilots?

to be fair, Y2K was a nothing burger because a lot of people put in a lot of work to fix the code before the systems crashed. A coordinated effort that actually paid off.

I still have cases of unopened cans of baseball cards i was convinced were going to be a new form of currency after the computer apocalypse.

What a terrible investment. Everyone knows it was going to be bottle caps

My PC just went back to 1986. 🤣

Man this place is pretty harsh.