Delta's Ed Bastian on spiking fuel, summer travel, and a blunt reality check on AI

Few companies have a better real-time read on the American economy than Delta, and few CEOs are more willing to say what they actually think. Ed Bastian returns to Rapid Response to share what Delta's booking data is telling him that the headlines aren't, why he's not convinced by AI until it moves his top line, and how he decided to yank congressional travel perks during the government shutdown. He also explains what it takes to stay optimistic when fuel costs are spiking, the Strait of Hormuz is in the news, and the world keeps finding new ways to be unpredictable. Visit the Rapid Response website here: https://www.rapidresponseshow.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Bob Safian?

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• 1:22Bob Safian?

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• 1:42Speaker 01

  AI is not trusted, and for good reason, probably. The hype is far greater than the actual value that's ultimately going to be derived. There's a conscience that needs to be deployed. And I think that's where people in the technology sphere just don't get it. They're out there selling, selling, selling. This world is moving faster. And staying resilient also means staying humble.

• 2:16Bob Safian?

  That's Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta and one of the most trusted leaders in corporate America. Ed makes a return visit to Rapid Response today to talk about the key business challenges of 2026, from rising energy prices and the Strait of Hormuz to evolving consumer preferences and AI hype versus AI opportunity. He shares what Delta's booking data is telling him about the economy that the headlines aren't, what it takes to stay optimistic when the world keeps throwing curveballs, and more. So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

• 2:57Bob Safian?

  I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta. Ed, great to see you.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Bob, good to see you again.

• 3:04Bob Safian?

  This is your fourth time on this show, on Rapid Response. We talked in the depths of the pandemic, in the heights of the recovery, and now 2026 has brought a different kind of environment. Military activity in Iran and spiking energy costs. Do you get frustrated by it all? Or is it just like, okay, another day, another crisis?

• 3:28Speaker 01

  You know, in this industry, we're very exposed to what happens in the world. There's things that influence travel across the board. So my constant refrain to my team is, in times that are good, to just get ready, because the next thing that's going to happen probably isn't good. And when times are bad, don't get into despair, because we know we've got the resilience gene and the capability and the experience set to power through. And that's indeed what we've done this year.

• 4:03Bob Safian?

  I mean, so much isn't in your control. Like, we thought the Strait of Hormuz was opening, and now maybe not. And like, how do you plan in that situation? Are there things you can do to influence these sort of geopolitical choices? Like, you talk to the White House, does it matter?

• 4:22Speaker 01

  I don't think you have a lot of influence in those types of affairs. But we control a lot more than we don't. We control our response. We control by trying to run the very best operation we can. And if fuel prices are up, we do our best to see the degree to which we can include that in pricing for our customers. And this past quarter, we were reasonably successful at that. We didn't cover all of the cost, but probably about 60% of the cost, which is, given the significance of the fuel spike, is a pretty strong statement of the value that customers see in the Delta product. And you can't worry about things

• 5:05Speaker 01

  you don't control. I mean, you just drive yourself crazy.

• 5:08Bob Safian?

  You did have to raise prices a bit to the fuel costs, which you said recently that consumers can afford it. And there's a little blowback on that. But there are no easy choices in this.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Our consumers have a tremendous amount of discretionary income that they've, and wealth, that they've accumulated over the last number of years. Employment's at pretty close to all-time highs. Labor engagement is strong. And we sit at the upper end of the K. And so when you have a product that people are very interested in securing, such as travel, and you look at an incremental, probably the numbers in the 12% to 15% range to which the cost of travel has increased, is that making a difference for most people? Travel is not the biggest cost item on the budget when you travel many times. And I

• 6:04Speaker 01

  think most people say, no, I'm not going to change from Delta. Delta is the airline that, when prices go up, I'm even more confident in flying, because I know the value I'm going to get is reliable.

• 6:17Bob Safian?

  You just announced this new basic option for some of the higher-class travel. Same seats and meals, but a few less perks. Does that reflect sort of cost concerns at the top end of customers?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Not at all, Bob. We have talked about this over the last several years. So this is not a new strategy. We're just finally coming around this year, starting to roll out. We've only introduced a handful of those product options. When you look back in the airline history, we basically had two products that we'd sell. We'd sell a first-class product and a main cabin product. We may have been good transportation providers, but we weren't very good merchandisers or retailers. People want to have more options of choice from us. And to the extent you can take the shelf that you've created and put different brackets

• 7:14Speaker 01

  on the shelf, if you want the classic, the standard product that you've been buying all along, it's there on the shelf. If you want a little more, or you want a little less, you give customers options. I think there's a lot of interest in that. And we'll see where it goes. This is a rollout. And to the extent that consumers have, and they will have a lot of input to us, we'll take that into account and continue to refine and get better at it.

• 7:39Bob Safian?

  And I guess keep your eye on, is there confusion over the new options? Or is it something that drives more engagement?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  That's the reason why it's taken us some time to develop this. Yeah, segmentation creates some misunderstanding at times, and we'll do our best to try to learn from that and get better at it. I've already heard from customers that I selected this box, but I didn't realize. And we'll make adjustments for people. We'll be very understanding as we go. But I think this is the next level of commercial strategy for an airline that is a great consumer brand, but doesn't necessarily operate in the merchandising world the way we could.

• 8:23Bob Safian?

  You have access, obviously, to all the booking data that comes through your app and your website. Are there things that you see in that that are different than the headlines? Like, does your data tend to lead the headlines or respond to it? Or is it different at different times?

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Our data is usually ahead of the headlines. So we just reported our second quarter results. We gave guidance for our third quarter, which ends at the end of September. But we already have about 70% of the revenue on hand for that third quarter through advanced bookings. So our bookings run anywhere from 60 to 120 days out. International runs longer, domestic runs a little shorter. And so we have a pretty good sense for how people are already thinking about the fall, how people are thinking about the upcoming holiday season. So economists and members of the Fed and others are always quite curious talking to us, because we have a pretty good pulse on how the consumer, at least our consumer, is viewing the current

• 9:26Speaker 01

  environment, but then translating that in terms of confidence to a future purchase commitment.

• 9:32Bob Safian?

  Your customer tends to be at the top end of the K. On the K-shaped economy, you get, I don't know, 20% more revenue per seat than competitors. Your premium cabin revenue almost on the verge of overtaking the main cabin. That decision, that lean into that customer, does anything about today's environment make you rethink that strategy or double down on that strategy? I mean, it sounds like that is still where, and the customer that you feel like is most healthy for you to focus on.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely. This is a decision that we took not recently. We took this 15 years ago. Shortly after we acquired Northwest Airlines, and as a result, we were the largest airline in the world, clearly. We still are, but it's closer now. And we had a commitment to ourselves that we weren't going to do the merger and start to introduce that level of scale unless we could actually differentiate in the marketplace and not be seen any longer as a commodity. Because if you're a commodity and you just get chosen, whoever has the lowest price, we lose. In fact, we lost back 20 years ago when we had to file for bankruptcy for that very reason. Delta offered a lot of things, but didn't get paid for it. And

• 10:48Speaker 01

  as a result, the business model didn't work, as it did for issues that a number of the big legacy carriers had. We spent many, many years figuring out what we called back then decommoditization. Today, we call it premium. Tomorrow, we'll probably find a more elegant term for it. And it starts with liability, building your trust with your consumer, deploying technology to assist along the way, develop more partnerships, whether it's with American Express, or Uber, or YouTube, TV onboard our planes, Paramount. We wanted to be there to make certain that we're getting the first call for the best dollar.

• 11:28Bob Safian?

  Seems like the more sort of bargain priced airlines seem to be the ones that are struggling. I mean, spirit is gone, right?

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Completely. And even, you know, we talked about prices have gone up, but on the lower end of the market, you know, by our estimate that those carriers still have to increase their pricing at least another 5% just to break even. And if that happens, guess what? It's going to help the top end too.

• 11:56Bob Safian?

  There's some concern that sort of with the with the rise of AI, that agent based buying will make price first more prevalent, right? I'm curious how you think about that, that AI agents may not favor brands the way humans do.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Unless the AI agents are going to be flying on the airplanes and actually, and actually providing surveys and I don't think it changes our equation any. I, you know, at the end of the day, a relationship with an airline is fairly personal. It's human. You're not going to let an agent tell you how you should feel about it, about a brand in the same way. And that's, and that's the hallmark of a great brand is how it makes you feel.

• 12:40Bob Safian?

  You deploy AI in your own operations. I know Delta tested AI for individualized ticket prices. Using AI for this, does it create, I don't know, a different kind of reputational risk because of the way people are emotionally reacting to, you know, to what AI is driving?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, AI is not trusted and for good reason, probably with all the hype that's been, that's been attached to it. We talked a year ago about the fact that we started to utilize some AI in the pricing algorithms and people extrapolated about surveillance pricing and individual, we're doing none of that and we never intended to do any of that. The only thing we're using AI in the pricing tool is to help our revenue managers be able to offer better pricing and more pricing to more markets around the world. At Delta, we have hundreds of thousands of price points out for sale at any given time

• 13:39Speaker 01

  of any day. We can only manage a select number of those with human eyes and we set on auto match, you know, the vast majority of those price points. And auto match basically is to make sure you don't get too far in or too far above or lower than where the market is coming in at. Through AI, we can bring more intelligence in setting those signals. Then AI works around the clock. It's 24/7. It's, it's always monitoring and seeing what's happening in the marketplace. And if our product is, should be higher, should it be lower, trying to give the customer the very best opportunity. We can only do that on our highest volume routes, but we still have a massive amount of routes, but we don't

• 14:24Speaker 01

  deploy it. So when you think about it, it's really, it's a knowledge tool. It's a learning tool and it's efficiency tool.

• 14:31Bob Safian?

  You've been known for your, your people first leadership. And I know a lot of people are worried about how AI is going to impact their, their jobs. How do you think about that? How do you talk to your team about that?

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Well, at Delta, I've been very clear that AI is just, first of all, I don't call it artificial intelligence. I refer to it as augmented intelligence. It's going to enable our teams to do a better job of what they do. We are a highly analytical business. We have 5,000 flights day, every day. And as a result of that, there is a tremendous amount of data, tremendous amount of intelligence in terms of monitoring and making decisions, whether it's in flight patterns, pricing the product, your mechanical reliability, your predictive engineering. There's just many, many disciplines that use that data. AI helps you make those decisions quicker, absorbs the amount of data that's out there

• 15:28Speaker 01

  far faster than anything we can do. We wound up making a lot of decisions based on judgment, which sometimes is seat of the pants, sometimes it's instinct. And these are going to be better data decisions. Now, that doesn't mean that we're going to need less people. It frees people up to have more time to serve. And if we do a great job of that, that's going to grow our business.

• 15:52Bob Safian?

  Some CEOs got, got boos for mentioning AI at school commencements. You asked AI to write your commencement speech for Emory and then scrapped it and warned graduates against pushing the easy button.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  And guess what? People stood and cheered when I said that.

• 16:07Bob Safian?

  So what's the easy button? And, and did going through that impact how you think about using AI yourself and for your team?

• 16:14Speaker 01

  I'll admit, I'm not a big user of AI. It's pretty hard to teach old dogs new tricks at times. I'm curious about it. I was impressed with how, with how quickly the speech within a matter of seconds is produced and is produced in words that I would be equated for. I talk in lots of public forums, so there's a lot of data out there as to how Ed Bastian would deliver a commencement address. But at the end of the day, it didn't have any soul. It had no, it had no spirit. It was, you know, I felt, felt like I was cheating. You know, they, they, to be given an opportunity to come to a commencement is an honor. And then I'm going to potentially use technology just to try to get it done

• 16:54Speaker 01

  quickly and check that box. It, it wasn't right. It wasn't right. And so there's, there's a conscience that needs to be deployed with AI. And I think that's where people, you know, in the technology sphere just don't get it. You know, they're out there selling, selling, selling.

• 17:12Bob Safian?

  Ed always calls it straight, which is one reason he's built up so much trust for himself and for Delta. So what are the real world risks and opportunities in AI deployment at a massive business like Delta? And is there an even bigger opportunity he sees ahead? We'll talk about that and more after the break. Stay with us.

• 17:40Speaker 02

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• 19:32Bob Safian?

  Before the break, Delta's Ed Bastian talked about why the airline's customers have been willing to pay more as energy costs have skyrocketed. Now, he talks about publicly calling out members of Congress, the real world risks and opportunities of AI for a massive business like Delta, and whether the future of the airline will be in space travel. Let's jump back in.

• 19:59Bob Safian?

  You and I have talked before about the role of CEOs in social and political issues. You were one of the first CEOs to speak out against tariffs during the government shutdown. You suspended Delta perks for members of Congress, calling out lawmakers for lack of leadership. Many CEOs have become more attentive in their comments with Trump in the White House. Has your calculation adjusted? Like, how do you decide what to step out about?

• 20:27Speaker 01

  I try not to step back. I'm not successful always, but I really try not to because I don't think there's any gain necessarily in doing it. It's just there comes a time when it's relevant to my business and it's relevant to my constituents that we have to do or say something. There's times that candidly, you get exasperated and you just wind up expressing or doing something that hit the, then that one with the congressional perks hit the bullseye on it. I don't think I heard a single negative comment. I get thousands of comments from people of all sorts of things every day.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  That was like 99%, you know, thank you for doing that.

• 21:14Bob Safian?

  So you have to trust that when your blood pressure is particularly high about something, maybe it's worth listening to that?

• 21:20Speaker 01

  You have to listen to it. You have to be careful. You have to talk to folks about it.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  But you know, there's, there's no point in grandstanding. These are politicians. That's what they do for a living. CEOs get chewed up in that, in that space very easily. And no matter what I would say, with that one exception, probably 50% would love whatever I say, 50% would hate whatever I say. And I do subscribe to the old Michael Jordan theory that Republicans buy sneakers just as much as Democrats do and Republicans fly in our airplanes just as much as Democrats do.

• 21:55Bob Safian?

  You sounded pretty passionate before when you were talking about AI. Do you, do you feel like the way technology companies and the way as a, as a sort of society we're approaching AI is the kind of thing that, that could use a little bit more leadership in sort of thinking about it?

• 22:14Speaker 01

  It absolutely can. And you know, we're in a race, certainly there to beat China. You know, I understand that, that backdrop, but I also understand the hype is far greater than the actual value that's ultimately going to be derived because these technology companies are not about people. These technology companies are trying to beat the other guy or to beat China or to beat somebody else. And they, they don't really care about our people. You know, they care about winning their race and I've got to be concerned about winning up my race. Everywhere I go, I ask the question, who's going to pay for the trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of investment that are being committed in capex and other, other forms to this race?

• 22:58Speaker 01

  And you know, I think it's pretty clear that our economy is being sustained by AI. Strip out AI's contribution to GDP, you realize GDP is pretty flat. So I think that's good that, you know, we're investing in the right stuff. We just have to be careful that, you know, the, there's, there's two forms to, to return. There's the value we get from it and how much did we spend to get it? And if we're going to spend more than we're going to get from it, we're not going to use it. And I think that mindset has to be kind of then pushed back through the system. And it's not about individuals. It really is about corporations because we make the big spending decisions as users for the stuff is to, to figure out where we may be going too fast or where, you know,

• 23:41Speaker 01

  there's, there's too many companies competing over the same opportunity.

• 23:45Bob Safian?

  If those valuations and that spending makes sense, the assumption is that a business like yours, like Delta, that this technology is going to save you a tremendous amount of money or open up a tremendous new, new opportunities, right? Some of that might be you need a lot fewer people, whatever the assumptions are. And if I'm hearing you right, like right now, you don't sort of see those things lining up.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  I'd say it's early. You know, I see opportunities, absolutely. And we're working on a lot of opportunities in the space. But these are opportunities largely about efficiency. They're not necessarily about how do you grow your top line? Cause if it's all about efficiency, well, I'm not sure I have that level of investment appetite just to be a little faster. If you show me how I'm going to triple my business, I'm more interested. And you're even hearing the technology companies start talking about returns and realize that, you know, returns matter. There will be winners and there'll be losers. We just have to be clear, not everybody's going to win.

• 24:49Bob Safian?

  Right. Not all that investment is going to pay off the way, the way people look at it.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you're thinking about, it's not just investment in the tech, it's investment in new forms, forces, sources of energy and nuclear. And I mean, so these, this is fairly dramatic in terms of the amount of long-term investment that's happening in the marketplace. Are consumers going to pay for that? Are businesses, who's going to pay for it? And they, you know, you talk to the utility companies, energy companies, they say, well, the technology guys are going to pay for it. Well, the technology guys aren't the ones selling to customers, you know, we are. So it's, it's, it's very interesting. I think at the end of the day, there will clearly be some type of settling out. And I hope it ends up on the good side of that rather than the dark side of that, but we'll find out.

• 25:37Bob Safian?

  This year marks your, your 10th year as, as CEO of Delta. When you look to the decade ahead, do you have any predictions that, that might surprise us? I mean, is the, is the next frontier going to be Delta space vehicles? Like, or might the, the future of Delta be expanding the brand to, to non-travel areas, which you've alluded to also?

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I don't think we'll be going into space. We have a partner that's in space, Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson and his, his company. And you know, Richard keeps trying to get me to go up there. I'm like, I'm not planning on it with him, but we have a big opportunity, not the next decade, I'd say the next century of making air travel much more available and accessible and affordable for the masses. When you realize only one in five people in the world have ever stepped foot on an airplane, this is a massive growth opportunity. We don't need to go to space. We just need to go, you know, explore new lands. And in exploring new lands, that brings understanding, that brings knowledge, that

• 26:40Speaker 01

  brings opportunity, that brings hope and inspiration, all of which is so positive.

• 26:46Bob Safian?

  But travel is the parameter around which the Delta brand really lives.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  I mean, it's always changing, but it'll largely be at the core, you know, commercial air travel, you know, for this planet. And I think the planes may change. You'll see different types of planes. You'll see more fuel efficient planes. The blended wing design takes off and we cut fuel emissions by 50%. And yeah, there's, there's a lot of innovation growing. We're investors in Joby, which is the, the air taxi business. And I think that you're going to see that's going to be, I think, a, a new form of transportation that, that will be here in the next couple, three years, starting, starting to kick off in the big cities where we'll be part of that.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  So there's, there's more ways of doing that, but I, I do think the, the bigger idea is international.

• 27:40Bob Safian?

  The listeners to this podcast are, are business people and, and I'm curious, like, if you have advice for them as a leader about how they think about what their role and their responsibility is in this moment between, you know, their own company, their shareholders and their employees and, and, and the world at large?

• 28:05Speaker 01

  One of the lessons I've learned over, over the years is, you know, there's a lot that we may aspire to, but you're not going to get, you're not going to get anywhere unless you're, unless you've got a team of people that are going to take you there. This world is, is moving faster. It's, it's, it's going to continue to be challenging. There's no, you never, you never fix the problems. The problems are always there and they're, they're not problems really. They're, they're challenges and they're opportunities for us. And you know, staying resilient also means staying humble and being, you know, willing to listen and willing to, to, to be, be impacted by, by forces bigger than yourself and being, you know, not afraid to, to let people know the vulnerabilities that are attached to leadership.

• 28:51Bob Safian?

  You're realistic, but you remain optimistic. Like it's, to what extent is the optimism like, it's just like an, almost like an article of faith, like you have to be optimistic because you, you have to get information every day of some trouble here or there, whatever, all over the organization.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Well, I, I learned something, I was, I knew a general Colin Powell years ago and spent a little time with him. And one of the things that he's, he would, he would talk a lot about back then and stayed with me for many years is optimism is a force multiplier. And if you want to go places and do things, and it's not false optimism, but it's optimism. You have to be, you know, open to what it's going to take and be willing to, to, to be confident in, in where you're headed. And the reverse of that, by the way, is also true. Cynicism is also a force multiplier. And people that are kind of looking at the dark side or the downside or the risk, there's

• 29:54Speaker 01

  not a lot of people that want to, want to go down those, those pathways. And you know, people have choices who they're going to follow and where, how they're going to spend their time and who they're going to invest their energy with. No matter how hard the challenge is every day, I stay focused on that optimism.

• 30:09Bob Safian?

  Well, Ed, as always, thanks so much for doing this.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Bob, great being with you. Thank you.

• 30:17Bob Safian?

  Talking with Ed always leaves me reassured, even when the topics aren't all sunny. His concerns about AI hype are bracing, yet his optimism about Delta itself remains unwavering. What struck me most was how his emphasis on data and technology was matched by enthusiasm around sentiment, that so much of impactful leadership is guided by feeling and human emotion, and that he embraces that element. Of course, the airline industry at its core is about the human joy of real world experiences. But for all of us, Ed's perspective is a reminder that even as technology burrows deeper

• 30:58Bob Safian?

  into our businesses, the guiding clarity of human priorities remains an essential competitive advantage. I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.

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• 31:57Speaker 02

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• 33:00Speaker 03

  Humans will never be more intelligent than AI.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  There's going to be two types of companies. Those are great at AI, and those that went out of business because they weren't.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  How do we build a future that is human-centered?

• 33:14Speaker 05

  I'm Rana Elkhayubi, and on my podcast, Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future, and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find Pioneers of AI wherever you tune in.

• 33:44Bob Safian?

  Rapid Response is a Wait What original. I'm Bob Safian. Our executive producer is Eve Trow. Our senior producer is Alex Morris, and our associate producer is Masha Makutonina. Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastinelli and Brian Pugh. Our theme music is by Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcasts is Lital Malad. For more, visit rapidresponseshow.com.

• 34:20Bob Safian?

  Hey, listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday, we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely, from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from the devil wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find. Just search Rapid Response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there.