Friday, February 13th was Profit Sharing Day at Delta. They paid out $1.3 billion in bonuses and also announced raises. Profit sharing amounted to 8.9% of salaries or about a month’s worth of pay.
Delta’s profit sharing exceeds the amounts paid out by the rest of the U.S. airline industry combined and it’s the ninth time they’ve paid out over $1 billion in profit sharing – basically every year since 2014 with a break during the pandemic.
- Delta has an industry-leading profit sharing formula (American matches that formula with some work groups, but doesn’t make much moeny)
- Delta makes more money than the rest of the industry
- So their profit sharing was more than that of the other airlines in the U.S. industry combined.
Those are the impressive numbers, but $1.3 billion isn’t just a number. It’s something very human. Because, while I’m a regular critic of Delta in a lot of ways, there’s something for employees of the airline to celebrate working there. Their shared efforts at service, reliability, and taking care of customers comes back in one clear moment each year in a very concrete way. And the whole company stops to live in that moment.
Here’s a great look at the actual day itself at headquarters, with each work group hosting celebrations, “a legit party over in IT” with DJs, karaoke, slushies, candy, video game rooms – and peach cobbler. Gelato from flight ops!
Delta’s business class isn’t better than American’s business class. They still fly too many 767s with an ancient seat. American AAdvantage and even MileagePlus are better loyalty programs than SkyMiles. But Delta employees are more likely to seem like they want to be at work on a given day, to appear happy to actually do their jobs, and exude a sense of professionalism. That shines through to customers.
Problems at American aren’t just cultural. They’re fleet and passenger layout (they don’t have enough premium seats, including extra legroom coach). But the culture at Delta is just so much stronger, that goes a long way towards making them more profitable, and profit sharing aligns incentives so that this cycle becomes self-reinforcing. Culture is a big part of why I say that the CEO of an airline has to sell their vision to employees, not just tweak policies and sign off on capital investment.
