Okay. Good morning, everybody. My name is Jamie Baker. I work JPMorgan. I cover the U.S. Airlines and aircraft leasing companies. I am joined by my good friend and colleague, Mark Streeter. It's our pleasure to welcome you to what I believe might be the 18th annual JPMorgan industrials Conference, which in fairness, started out as a treasurer credit afternoon under Mark's watch, and hopefully has grown into one of the better, if not the best industrials events. We hope to make good use of your time, today. We certainly respect that you're here to see the companies and not me and probably not Mark. Why don't you add to that, and then we'll kick off the show.
You're probably all wondering why we're not on the second floor. That space is under renovation. The new building opens up in summer of 2025. If you stick around for March of 2026, we'll be across the street, next year we should be back in our old space. Thanks, everyone, for coming.
Somebody asked me this morning why Delta usually has the privilege of going first, and I explained it's comparatively simple. As an airline, you need to generate half of the industry's profit. You have to pay out more in profit-sharing than every other U.S. airline combined, and then you get the opening slot. That's my challenge to Delta's competitors. If anyone would like to, you know, have the opening spot next year, go for it. With that, I will turn it over to Julie Stewart for the Safe Harbor, but we'll be joined momentarily by Ed Bastian. Dan Janki and Glen Hauenstein will be, you know, joining us up on stage and very eager to get an update on the Delta story. Good morning, everybody. Thank you.
Good morning. Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements that represent our beliefs or expectations about future events. All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Some of the factors that may cause such differences are described in Delta's SEC filings, and we'll also talk to non-GAAP financial measures. Please see the appendix of today's presentation at ir.delta.com for more information. Now I'll turn it over to Ed.
Well, thank you, Julie. Good to be here. Jamie, I agree with you. This is, in my opinion, my humble opinion, the premier industrial conference that we get to present at each year. Thank you and Mark for and your teams for putting together a great lineup, giving us great access to some high quality, many high quality investors, and being able to tell the story as an industry, not just as an individual airline. With that, let's get going. Julie, you said that really quickly. That's a lot of words.
Yeah.
I practiced.
The lawyers have been hard at work on that page, I can tell. Well, it's good to see everyone. Thank you for coming. 2023 is off to a strong start for our airline. We'll be talking a lot about 2023 over the course of today. Before I do that, I wanted to spend a second letting you know that we're on plan with our three-year plan. We're on trajectory. About this time, I guess about 15 months ago, you know, we laid out a three-year plan at our capital markets day, December of 2021. When you think about all that's happened in the intervening 15 months, things that could have thrown us off track to be able to say that almost halfway through that three-year plan that we're on track.
2022 performance was ahead of what we were planning in that three-year plan. Our 2023 targets and forecast and guidance is right in line, if not slightly better than we were thinking. We're expecting 2024 to be the same. It's a real testament to the strength of the operating system at Delta, the people of Delta and what we've created as the world's best airline. It all starts with people. I always lead off each one of my presentations thanking the Delta team. We have the best people. We were at a investor dinner last night, and I got asked the question, just how do you guys consistently deliver top tier performance when everybody else has many of the same, you know, attributes, the same equipment, the same stations, the same route networks?
The only thing that really separates us from our peers are the people of Delta Air Lines. Their quality, their consistency, their focus on service, the culture of performance is something that we take great pride in. Our people are leading the way. They are our greatest strength. We were pleased to be able to offer, as Jamie said, the largest profit-sharing in the industry. Our profit-sharing payout to our employees this past year was $550 million, which was greater than all of the other airlines put together in terms of their profit share payouts. You see a great alignment of the rewards together with the hard work and sacrifice. Alignment with our owners as well as our customers and the management team is really the glue that holds this whole thing together.
We're also pleased that we received strong ratification from our pilots on our new contract, our new four-year agreement. That's done. Our pilots, it was a well-deserved increase. It was a long period of time to have the negotiations over, we're now focused on the marketplace. We're no longer focused on how to, how to get the contract done. We're now focused on winning together, that's a great thing as well. For the rest of our employees, we have maintained their, the premium place they sit within the industry on pay.
We've already announced that starting April 1st, all of our other employees, the pilots union, not that familiar with Delta, is the only union, main union we have on property, already kicked in at the start of this year. The rest of our employees will be getting a 5% increase starting April 1. That's already in our guidance. That's in our forecast. That was in the plan for the year. All of our labor costs are in the numbers. They're not just in the numbers, they're known by our people and you've taken a big uncertainty off the table for our investors. For our customers. The work that our team delivers is top-notch.
You can see on the bottom of the slide as many of our awards, we are humbled by the awards, the recognition that we continue to receive. Two of the awards I'll talk about for a second that's really driven by our people and their operational excellence was in 2022, which in my opinion, was the most difficult and challenging environment in US aviation history as we tried to bring the airline systems back up against unprecedented demand. You know, people were just ready to go, and they didn't matter where they were going or how much they were paying, they just wanted to get out. Our resources, clearly, were not in position to be able to satisfy that large amount of demand.
Our people still won the award by Cirium, which is the top consultancy that looks after global airline performance as the most reliable, the most on-time airline of the year in 2022. Quite a statement in the most difficult period ever. Quite a statement, the fact that 1/4 of our total team of 90,000 are new within the last two years. Having a strong base of new talent joining us, you can see how culture matters in terms of bringing that operating performance to light. Innovation in digital technology is something that we're spending a lot of time. We spent a lot of time over the course of the pandemic investing in digital engagement.
Increasingly, that's one of the reasons our customers are choosing Delta, and the strength of our brand is the quality of the digital engagement, the self-service, you know, in your hand with the Delta app. Three years ago, when I was at Consumer Electronics Show, I described a future where you would have a Red Coat, a famous Delta Red Coat by your side, not necessarily in person, but in the form of virtual of your app, of Delta, be able to take care of any need you have as your plans change, as you want to manage your schedule, as you want to book a trip, as you want to wayfind and navigate your journey with us. We now have that technology in the app, and it's one of the best travel apps in the industry, and we continue to make it better.
Witness the announcement we made at CES this year about offering free Wi-Fi on all of our fleet. Fast, it's free, it works, there's no charge. It doesn't matter where you're sitting on the plane, it works just great. There's no cost to our customers. I'll talk a little bit why we did that in a second. Finally, the SkyMiles penetration. The co-brand acquisitions continue at double-digit year-over-year growth. We've talked a lot about our targets for 2023 to get to a $6.5 billion contribution with American Express, we're on track to deliver that and to hopefully even a bit more as we progress over the course of the year. For our owners, what does that mean? That means high-end performance within our industry.
We get a lot of questions around demand. I get, you know, everyone's worried about it. I know I saw the announcement that people are trying to figure out with United, what's going on. I can't talk to that. I know Scott's gonna follow me, so you can ask him those questions. I can tell you at Delta, our demand is strong and getting stronger. In the last 10 days, or excuse me, in the last 30 days, we've had the 10 highest sales days in our company's history. 10 highest sales days in our company's history in just the last 30 days. If anyone's looking for weakness, don't look at Delta. I mean, we're seeing great strength. Acknowledging part of that is a little bit of consumer behavioral shift.
People remember last spring and summer how hard it was to get those trips that they wanted to go on. We've seen a little bit of a pull forward in terms of the advanced bookings, but that's modest relative to the strength of the underlying demand when I look at, you know, the price points, the yield that we're seeing on a global scale, not just on a domestic scale. That's enabling our ability to generate strong cash flow. We're expecting to generate over $2 billion of free cash this year for our business while investing close to $6 billion back into the business. I know a lot of airlines are either investing heavily in CapEx and thus don't have free cash flow, or they have free cash flow because of not investing heavily in the business. At Delta, you get both.
We're doing both. We're proud of that. This is a slide from our investor deck in December when we gave an update, and it speaks to the unmet demand that this industry has experienced over the course of the pandemic. As you can see on the slide, going back into the 1980s, there was a very, very tight correlation between GDP in a given year and the amount of spend on airfare, airline travel, whether it be on U.S. airlines within the U.S. or international airlines in and out of the United States. It's 1.3%, 1.4% on a consistent basis. It's broken a couple times. 9/11 it broke, and it bounced straight back. The recession at the end of last decade broke and bounced straight back.
Then obviously, the pandemic, it broke, people are still looking at what the trajectory back means. The amount of unmet demand that consumers had for air travel relative to what they actually spent and were able to spend because of the pandemic, that gap is $300 billion by our estimate. We anticipate, clearly, the $300 billion isn't gonna come back, but we are gonna over-correct on that historical relationship of 1.3% to 1.4% of GDP. That's why you see despite all the challenges that the world is talking about on the health of the consumer economy, airfare and air travel continues to be right at the top of the list as a priority for consumers.
We've talked a long time over the last year and a half that we're gonna see a flip between the goods sectors and the service sector. Indeed, we've seen that over the course of the last year. In the service sector, our business is an experience business. We're part of the experience economy, not just the services. We're part of this, the experience economy, and what people why they use our product is because of the experience that they're going to, the experience that they're enabling or that we're enabling for them. That is the premium part of the overall service shift that you see coming back, and it's roaring with great strength.
I anticipate over the course of the next several years, not just the next several quarters, you're gonna see the continued out delivery of that historical 1.4% of GDP for our industry. Just the gap in 2022 alone between where we were at 1.4% historically and the actual spend is somewhere in the $30 billion-$40 billion range, and that's what you see continuing to drive the strength. That's one of the reasons. In fact, it's the main reason why we have had the 10 highest sales days in our history within the last month. That core demand is really strong, and it's our job to make sure we're delivering it in great execution manner. At this year's Consumer Electronics Show, we went and we were one of the keynote presenters.
I had the opportunity to do that in Vegas. It was a lot of fun being back on stage in Vegas. We made a pretty simple announcement. You know, Wi-Fi is free basically everywhere you go, but air travel. In fact, I was giving a presentation a week ago to a group. The opening slide I had in my presentation was, with all the innovation and investment in air travel and our industry over time, there's one unmet question that still remains to be solved, is why does in-flight Wi-Fi suck so bad? The reality is it's hard. It's a tough, a tough thing. You know, it's great when you're sitting on the ground and you're, you're able here in this room to call up anything you want and be connected to anywhere in the world you want.
You go up in the sky and you're traveling at 500 mi an hour, it's a little more difficult. This is hard stuff that we've done. We have enabled and partly because of the pandemic, we were able to make the improvement and the progress both in the equipment that we're carrying, as well as changing out our service provider, moving to Viasat, create an opportunity for customers to experience free fast Wi-Fi wherever they go. We're already up and running. 80% of our US domestic seats have that service capability today, and we're seeing people use it, and they're seeing no deterioration in the quality of the performance, despite the massive amount of pipe that we've now opened. International is not yet open.
That'll be open by the end of next year as we bring the international fleet up. You know, there's a lot of reasons why we did this. First and foremost, it's part of the core experience. You know, we are in the business of connecting people. It was always ironic to me, and I've talked about this for years, how we're in the experience business, we're in the connected world. The only place you're not connected is in the sky. Now some people like that. They don't wanna be found by their boss. They don't wanna be bothered by their spouse or whatnot. I mean, they ruined it for them. My apologies, but the vast majority of us need to stay connected, and particularly younger generations of travelers really want to be connected.
You know, I talk about the fact that Delta, we carry 200 million people a year in terms of aggregate number of consumers, and within that number, 50 million of those are unique customers. You know, many customers flies many times a year. We have 200 million people a year with us on average, three hours a session. We even have them seat belted in and all facing forward. They can't move, and they're bored out of their minds. This, to me, has always been the goldmine as to how we could to figure out a way to create value for our customers first and foremost, but also for our owners by having that captive audience and what can you do to create an, better experience for them.
Well, Wi-Fi is the answer to that because you can only get to those consumers if you come through our pipes. You know, people cannot connect on Wi-Fi in the air unless you're connected through the airline system. That's why Delta kept the system. That's why we've invested over $1 billion in the last three years in creating this opportunity. We're there along with partners, it's not just Wi-Fi that's for free.
Starting in April, we're gonna have several partners that are on that Wi-Fi portal that we call Delta Sync, where we're gonna have T-Mobile, you know, providing exclusive opportunities for customers together with SkyMiles opportunities to make offers, you know, of interest to customers if they decide to look at it, but they'll have the opportunity to be present on that. Paramount+ is providing their full library of content to our Delta Wi-Fi portal users. Historically, you know, we would pay, and we still pay for the in-flight entertainment product that you see on our seat back screens. Starting in April, that content is gonna be free for Paramount+ on that Wi-Fi portal. In fact, they'll pay us for the opportunity to be able to provide that content.
Of course, we have American Express as well. That's also with us. We're three lanes of opportunities when we also have The New York Times puzzles, we have Atlas Obscura that's gonna be on the site. We want Wi-Fi not just to be about Wi-Fi. We want Wi-Fi to create an opportunity, an entertainment channel to create engagement. Also, the fact that we have so many of the... I talk about the 50 million individual unique users we have. Only half of those are members of our program today, of the SkyMiles program. We have 25 million customers that travel on Delta a year that we don't know who they are, really. The only ask that we make in order to access the portal is that you be a member of our program. Doesn't cost anything.
It's free. It's great. It'll provide us opportunities to personalize service to you and build better connectivity with our customers. We've seen the success. It's amazing. We started soft launch in November. We went to full launch in February. Full meaning 80% domestic. We're still not even into international. We already have had over 300,000 people sign up to be SkyMiles customers that are already our customers, that were already on board our flight, signing up to say, "Yeah, I want to be part of this movement that you're creating." The average age of that customer is 32 years old. The average age of our SkyMiles portfolio in total, the demographic is 38 years old. We're getting the desired effect in terms of younger people that want to be connected.
We know that we're building loyalty that's gonna last generations by doing this, which is another reason why it's free. We want those customers to stay with us 'cause when customers come to Delta, they tend not to leave us. We're very sticky as a brand. This is, I think, generation-building for years and years and decades to come. That's why we're pleased to launch this, and we're gonna continue to be very aggressive in pursuing this avenue for the future. That's our next step in digital, there's many more aspects to digital than simply that. The financial outlook is strong. This is the guidance that we presented at the Capital Markets Day in December. It stays intact. Our full year 2023, we're looking at revenue growth in the 15%-20% range.
Operating margin of 10%-12%. EPS of $5-$6 per share. That's almost a double from our 2022 EPS to 2023. Free cash flow of greater than $2 billion, which is helping us reduce the leverage that we carry. The leverage ratio we're targeting for this year is, by the end of the year, is between three and three and a half times. 2024, which is the last year of the three-year plan, we're on track. We're targeting a mid-double-digit operating margin between 13% and 50%. EPS of $7 a share or greater, and free cash flow of over $4 billion for next year. All signs are good. With respect to the current quarter, we're on track with our guidance.
we're gonna be profitable this quarter, one of the few airlines, that will be profitable in the first quarter. This will be the fourth quarter in a row that the airline is profitable. On a 12 month run rate, we've crossed all those hurdles, and now we need to figure out in the first quarter, as Glen and I were talking, how to be profitable every month of the first quarter, which will be our next task for next year, but I'm confident we will get there. I know we'll get questions during the Q&A and on some of the guideposts within the quarter. The numbers have moved around just a touch to get there, but the EPS, the guide that we gave is solid, and it's unchanged as we see the business.
In conclusion, you can tell hopefully from our presentation, the short presentation, that we've got a lot of enthusiasm and excitement for our future, and we really do believe that Delta is uniquely positioned to continue to perform and lead the industry. With the best-in-class people, service and operation, supported by a consumer brand that's gaining in strength, as a premium airline. Fortune magazine last month named Delta the most admired airline in the world. First time that we ever had that honor, as well as the twelfth most admired company, period. When you think about an airline getting that level of recognition coming through a pandemic, it's a real testament to the team and the people of the company. We have the world's leading international joint ventures in our business.
We have great investments in LATAM Airlines, not just JVs, but investments in LATAM, Korean Air, both of which are the two leading franchises in South and Latin America, as well as in Asia, that we really haven't even started to scratch the surface on, that we're now getting at as everyone is coming through the pandemic. Just a great set of partners in Europe with Virgin Atlantic, Air France and KLM. We feel great. Of course, Aeroméxico on our southern border. We have great partnerships, great team, and the pandemic candidly brought us a lot closer together as we went through the fire, and we stayed tight through this. We've got a great management team. Glen, Dan, Julie are representative of that. We're a team that's been together for a long time.
We've been through it. We've been through 9/11 together. We've been through recessions together. We've been through mergers together. We've been through bankruptcies together. We've been through the pandemic together, okay? This is a tested team. That's why when you saw how we performed over the course of the pandemic, that disciplined approach, we weren't jumping around. We weren't trying to grab market share here and be opportunistic there. We've been have a very steady hand as to the strategy we're deploying. It's working. It has got us back to the top. The industry is constructive. I think everyone is familiar with that. The supply constraints that are in place, the training requirements to be able to bring pilots and other staff in are unique. Consumer spend is shifting towards this experience sector.
While we always get the question, I'm sure we will today, on where's corporate travel? Corporate travel is somewhere in the mid-1980s, back, traditional corporate travel. As I tell many of my CEO friends across the industry and outside the industry, I know where your employees are. They may not be in the office, but you can find them on my airplanes. That's because of the new way of work, the new hybrid, new mobility, and I don't think that's changing. I think that's gonna be something that stays with us. Anything that enhances mobility, in my opinion, enhances our opportunity to succeed and grow and provide greater value to our customers. Finally, I just covered the financial momentum that continues to build.
We're feeling good about that EPS guide of $5-$6, a double over the 2022 EPS performance. We're feeling very good as we're going into the heavy spring and summer season when I mentioned that the amount of cash that we're building and the demand that is off the charts in terms of any kind of precedent. I present to you Delta Air Lines. I thank you, for those of you that are owners of the stock already, for your support of us, your encouragement. It's been a tough three years. At this first time, personally, I've been back, Jamie, I think since 2019.
Since as you mentioned last night, you were the first to cancel, or go virtual rather, on the conference, and you were the first to also back out. I wasn't able to come here last year at this time, but I'm just glad to be back. It feels good. It's great to be here with you. Thank you.
Audience Q&A. Just for those of us that didn't get a chance to really dig into the 8-K, I know the guide for the first quarter was affirmed, but you alluded to some of the guideposts having moved around. How did the quarter develop relative to the plan that you laid out on January twelfth or whenever it was?
It's, Glen and Dan can provide a little more details. It's largely played out as we, as we thought. One thing that we have experienced this winter, particularly in the northern tier of our country, really disruptive weather. Our capacity is not able to. We're gonna be short, shy in capacity a touch. I don't know if the number is less than 1 point, but it's a meaningful point of capacity relative to the plan we had, that's got a cost impact in terms of non-fuel costs. We guided in the quarter our non-fuel unit cost to be up 3%-4%. It's gonna have a four handle on it as compared to a three handle on it's not out of control. It's within the general range.
The gross amount of revenue might be, you know, I think we're gonna be pretty close, but the TRASM might be helped a bit. On balance, we're kind of right down the middle in terms of the guide. Anything you guys want to add to that?
Feel really good about where we sit on margins and EPS, and cash is coming in better than expected. We had $500 million of debt maturities in the quarter, but we're doing more proactive liability management in the quarter in the open market and chipping away at debt reduction and reduction in interest expense.
Ed, you may not remember this, but a few years ago, this was pre-COVID, clearly. One of my competitors on the American call asked Doug Parker at the time, I believe the question was, you know, "Are you an airline or are you a marketing company?" I think most people and certainly Doug, they just kind of brushed the question aside, but I didn't think it was that off base. When I listen to your presentation today, I mean, it really seems... I mean, I know that RASM, CASM, fuel, it's always gonna, you know, lie at the root of what you do, connecting people. Are you a consumer brand at this point? Should investors be thinking about you differently than just the traditional nuts and bolts of flying?
I think so, Jamie, and it's very much think so. We talked last night. You know, we used to target being a high-quality industrial. I'm not sure what people know what that means. People do know what a premium consumer brand means 'cause we're direct-to-consumer. Yes, what we operate, it's capital intensive, it's got long cycle at big scale. At the end of the day, it's to deliver a consumer experience. Consumers, what we've learned during the pandemic more than ever, value that experience. They value the not just the cleanliness and the comfort and the care that we take of them, which was evidenced by whether we blocked the middle seats for a year and a half or whatever route we approached it.
It's the on-time performance, it's the reliability, it's the consistency of execution, the friendliness of our team when you're on board Delta. We want our customers to feel like they're halfway home, you know, when they cross foot onboard our aircraft. The investment we're making in the airports that are consistent, whether it's the new LaGuardia, whether it's LAX and many, many more that we're in process that we continue to finish out. It's the technology, you know, having that digital. One of the things that, you know, has changed a lot over the last decade is that our overall direct-to-consumer sales on our website were over 50% of the actual bookings we take is direct to Delta. That's more than tripled in the last decade.
The world of the OTAs controlling pricing and commoditizing the sector, at least at Delta, that's changed meaningfully. Customers trust us. They give us, you know, they may shop separately, but they know they get the best value on Delta in a personalized opportunity. The more and more which we can continue to drive to our employees as well as our investors that this is a brand that matters. You don't get the ranking of 12th most admired company by Fortune if you're not a brand that matters to consumers.
It, I think it'll pay dividends for how we look at our business, the investments we're taking going forward, and hopefully how investors will start to see where that multiple gap and the opportunity for value it creates both on the cash side, the American Express partnership, probably one of the leading, if not the leading commercial partnership period in the Delta American Express card. Work we're doing on the clubs, you know, just across the board. It's a different company, very different company that we accelerated during the pandemic.
Ed, maybe you can take us on a journey around the world. You mentioned your international JVs. I'm just sort of wondering, with your major partnerships, just where we are, maybe, you know, thinking about which inning we're at in South America versus Transatlantic versus Asia, 'cause it seems like the U.S. is more recovered and that the margin upside in the U.S., we're getting close. In international, there might be more upside. When I'm thinking about your 2024 guide for EPS and so forth, how much of that is driven by that further recovery in international with those partners versus ongoing recovery in the U.S.?
I think you're right. I'll turn it to Glen, get him to give his perspective. He's got the best perspective in the industry on that.
Sure. Thanks for the question. I think we're really excited about international returns this year and the development of the international partnerships. If I start with the Pacific, which, it's fully recovered really with the exception of China. As we all know, I think we don't know where the China relationship with the U.S. is going, and we're all restricted to very few of the pre-pandemic. Put China aside, the Pacific is fully restored, and we're coming back into a position of strength here because for years, we didn't have an antitrust ATI-enabled joint venture with Korean, and now we have that. Really leveraging that and having Korea drive our presence into Southeast Asia.
We, we believe the Seoul hub is the best hub for connections in Asia, and we're really exploiting that, and we're seeing very, very strong returns in Asia. Of course, in South America, when you put LATAM and Delta together, we go from number three position as Delta to a number one position from U.S. to South America, and we're gaining share as we speak. We, during the pandemic, gained, of course, ATI-enabled joint venture with our partners in LATAM, and we have great plans moving forward. Deep South Latin America was one of the last to restore, but it is, it's gaining momentum now, and it's on par with the rest of the internationals. Lastly, in Europe, where we have our most mature joint ventures in place.
Last year was a tough year, particularly in Amsterdam, where we had a lot of cancellations, we had a lot of reductions in service, and we had really a customer experience that needed improvement. We've been working very, very hard with KLM and the Dutch authorities to make sure that that is not a repeat this year, and we feel very confident as we move into spring and summer. That was a real drag on earnings last year, and we think that's back in play and that we should have a great summer to the Netherlands this year. Around the world, I think we're very, just what you see is, we're very optimistic.
They were the last to recover. Now business recovery in all entities, it's really interesting to see Domestic, Pacific, ex-China, Latin America and Europe are all in that mid-1980s recovery. They're within a few point band of each other, which people wouldn't think on the surface, but it's really progressing quite nicely.
Is there a structural reason why international margins can't be the same as your domestic margins?
You know, that's our long-term goal, and I think we'll achieve a good portion of that this year. We're really expecting to have our highest margins ever. My commitment to Ed is we'll have our highest margins ever this summer out of season in the transatlantic.
Maybe the structural nature during the pandemic restructured the fleet, penetration of next generation, the growth in premium product on the international with DPS, Delta Premium Select, the counter seasonal flying, along with, you know, better cargo. When you put all that together, those are the underpinnings in addition to what Glen talked about that drive margin improvement.
We forget the history here is last April, we were still testing to go back and forth to Europe, so people were reticent to go over there thinking they might get stuck. This year is gonna be a very different year. We think a very robust year for all of the international entities.
I think a couple of other things in addition is that these number of our carriers, LATAM, Aeroméxico, Virgin, went through some very difficult restructurings and wound up cleaning up their balance sheets meaningfully. They're getting their cost structure down. They're gonna be in strong condition to continue to start to build and grow in the future alongside us. There's a lot of optimism on the international front. I really do believe that when you talk about the strength of the demand bouncing back, it's outsized international because in the domestic market, we could still get around somehow. We, you know, we didn't feel as confined, but people meaningfully lost time international in terms of trips, adventures, business, family, host of reasons.
We see that component of our business, probably the strongest demand we have, period.
One more for me. Hopefully, we'll take a couple from the audiences in the time we have left. I personally am uncomfortably bulled up about the industry construct right now for a lot of the reasons that you identified, and anybody that reads my research will understand. It just makes me feel, I don't know, I wouldn't say dirty inside, but it's just, it's just not natural for me.
We don't stand prosperity well, do we?
Right. Well, I mean, the question, there has. I can't accept that every aspect of COVID led to improved structural positioning for Delta. There has to be something that is impaired in your franchise, specific idiosyncratic to Delta as a result of COVID. There just has to be. What am I missing?
Well, I'd say I agree with you. While we share your bullish optimism, if not even more bullish than you, which is a strong statement, we also understand that we're not fully back to where we need. Not, back isn't even the right word, we're not where we want to be yet. It's not about going back, it's about going forward. An example that I mentioned, one out of four employees at Delta are new to the company over the last, you know, year or two.
There's a tremendous amount of experience that we've got to reclaim and we got to invest in in terms of the productivity, the efficiency, the service standard, the culture of performance at Delta that we have as a system with so many new people into the management as well as the front lines of the company, it's taken us, you know, kinda catches our breath a little bit when we're this training and the continued, you know, bringing people to a different level of performance. Even by the way, many of the 25,000 people that have joined us came from other airlines. They always wanted to have a chance to get inside there and we're having to say, "No, somebody else may do it this way, but we do it this way," and just kinda keeping that.
I'd say that's certainly one of the things that's holding us back a bit, coupled with, you know, the overall fragility of the aviation infrastructure, whether it's air traffic control and going through some of those same challenges of resources and experience and our people. We'd like to fly more. We'd like to kind of push when the demand is so hot. We'd like to be able to push our revenue and our supply even faster. We can't. We're not gonna go through a summer like last summer ever again. We're not gonna outstrip our resources. I'd say that's one. I'd say another one is, you know, that culture. I mean, it's. I started by saying our people are everything to us. They're the reason we have the premiums.
They're the reason we have the leading standing within the industry. When you have so many new people, you know, the culture is something that you gotta fight for. You gotta continue to ingrain in and that's why I'm on the road almost every day, you know, different places with our people as many of the management team is, to continuing to bring them along and understanding what it's like. Profit sharing, you know, it was great to have profit sharing this past year, but it's still not what it was. It's taken some time to coach people up and get that experience set where it needs to be. I'd say that's probably the thing that's changed about the pandemic.
There's certainly been other changes that we've gone through, but I'd say those are some of the big ones.
Questions in the room.
Thanks, Mark. Ed, what are the biggest constraints facing the airline? Is it shortage of pilots? I'm hearing young people are not attracted to becoming pilots like they used to be, and that the buyouts of the senior pilots had a big impact on the industry. Is that one of the biggest constraints facing you?
I'd say there are several. I'd say pilots are certainly still a constraint for the industry generally. Delta, a little bit less so because we've been at this for three years. We've hired several thousand pilots over the last couple of years, and now it's just getting them through training and into the cockpit and into the proper seat and the proper growth. It's not just the fact that we have so many pilots that we've hired and trained. There's over thousand of our pilots that are experienced, that are involved in the training of those pilots. The vacuum that it creates, you know, the ability to fly and push your schedule is meaningfully constrained. It's impacted us at the regionals, at the lower level. That's where we sourced a lot of our pilots.
I think this is something the industry, it'll take a number of years for the industry. I don't think it's that people are unwilling to enter the profession. I think it's just the nature of the beast, the challenges of accumulating the hours, getting the experience. It's an expensive profession to get into, and you'll see that improve together with the new pilot contracts that Delta signed, and I expect a number of our peers will be signing soon. OEM performance, whether it's on the engine side, whether it's on the manufacturer side, the airplane side, is something that has taken a huge hit during the pandemic.
You know, Boeing's inability to get their certifications that's taken years out of the pipeline in terms of growth for our industry. As an investor, some would say maybe that's good, but it's a constraint that we still see in as much as with Boeing, it's with Airbus too. It's increasing loss of the engine production, the engine manufacturers, the supply chain, the tier two, three, four suppliers that they're still having to stand up and create the level of performance that we need to take delivery. I'd say those are two. There are several others.
I mean, I think the volatility in the environment, the geopolitical environment are constraints that gives us pause as to how hard to push international growth going into a China, say, or going into other parts of the world. Those are some of the constraints that we see. Manageable, but I think will create an opportunity for us all to be very disciplined about how we manage our existing resources. Couple that with the health of the demand environment should create a very good margin opportunity for the industry, not just for Delta.
Great. Ed, thank you.
Thank you, all. Good seeing everybody.