Delta CEO expects Trump presidency will be 'positive' for the airline

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said Donald Trump was helpful to the carrier in his first term, and he expects his return to the White House to be “positive” for Delta.

“We worked with President Trump well in his first term,” Bastian said during an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Bastian, who has led Atlanta-based Delta since 2016, said Trump was “very helpful” in Delta’s fight against what it called unfair advantages that Middle Eastern airlines have because of subsidies from their governments.

“He was a strong supporter of the U.S. airlines and U.S. jobs,” which Bastian said he expects will continue. “He knows our industry well — very, very well.”

In the wake of Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in last week’s election, business leaders are assessing what a change in administrations will mean for their industries, including regulation.

Delta has a hub at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, and Bastian said Trump also “knows LaGuardia very well. He’s had a plane there for years and years and years.”

In one instance, however, Trump reportedly was angry when Bastian missed a meeting of airline CEOs with him in the Oval Office in 2019 during his first term. And in 2017, Bastian also criticized the Mexican border wall in reported remarks.

“I think on balance, the platform he ran on was to try to unlock business potential by looking at regulation as to where it was most effective in trying to ease the bureaucracy, ease the burdens,” Bastian said.

Bastian has raised complaints about regulatory moves by the Biden administration. Industry media reports cited comments Bastian made in September complaining about U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s response to flight cancellations during and after the CrowdStrike outage. Delta had an operational meltdown with thousands of flight cancellations.

Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation, in a move to protect consumers stranded by the flight cancellations, categorized the disruptions from the outages as “controllable,” which meant Delta and other airlines were responsible for covering costs of meals and transportation.

“I got pretty annoyed with our secretary of Transportation,” Bastian said in September, according to quotes in a report on thriftytraveler.com that were later removed because Bastian made the comments during an event that was not intended to be open to the media.

“All that was just insane. … Technology providers knock us out, and then it’s our fault?” Bastian said, according to quotes in the report, which were preserved in citations by other travel media. “You’ve got politicians running some of the Cabinet offices there, and they’re doing it to make inroads and get name recognition.”

“You can imagine the conversation I had with him privately,” Bastian said, according to the report.

Buttigieg also criticized Delta on social media, saying the DOT had received reports of “continued disruptions and unacceptable customer service conditions at Delta Air Lines, including hundreds of complaints. … I have made clear to Delta that we will hold them to all applicable passenger protections.”

And Buttigieg read aloud angry tweets toward Delta in a video posted on YouTube by The Recount

Following the election of Trump to a second term, Bastian noted Delta spends “a lot of time with DOT or FAA or other regulators.”

“We always question, you know, what their ultimate ulterior motives are, and clearly, sometimes they’re political,” he said.

Bastian said he thinks the Trump administration is “going to give us an opportunity, not just the president but his team, to be able to question some of the overreach that we’ve talked about in the past.”

An aviation attorney voiced similar expectations.

Gregory Speier, transportation partner at global law firm Reed Smith, said he expects a future Trump secretary of transportation to amend or unwind some of the consumer friendly policies of the Biden DOT.

“These rules and regulations, while heavily publicized by Biden’s DOT to give passengers additional rights and benefits, impose significant challenges to and place heavy burdens on carriers operating in the U.S.,” Speier said in a written analysis.

Speier also said that the Republican-led Congress or Trump himself could roll back emission standards for carriers.

The Department of Justice under Biden also blocked some mergers, including one by Spirit and JetBlue, a step Speier said he does not expect a Trump DOJ to pursue, opening up merger and acquisition opportunities in the sector.

He also sees a Trump administration promoting profitability for the industry.

“While such changes may be welcomed by airlines and aerospace manufacturers, they would represent a shift away from current consumer protections and climate-focused policies,” Speier said.

Other airline industry groups gave congratulatory messages to Trump after the election.

“We look forward to working with them and the new administration to advance policy priorities that will benefit American consumers, commerce and the economy,” industry group Airlines for America said in a written statement.

The Air Line Pilots Association union said it “stands ready to work with the president-elect and the newly elected Congress on continuing our country’s important efforts to keep flying safe and advancing the piloting profession.”