Delta Air Lines, the biggest and most profitable U.S. airline, lost $534 million in the first quarter, a setback that will appear trivial when the full force of the pandemic is revealed in the current quarter.
Delta warned Wednesday that revenue during the April-through-June quarter, typically a period of harried travel, will plummet by 90% compared with last year, when there were no government travel restrictions and flights were full. “These are truly unprecedented times for all of us," CEO Ed Bastian said.
Delta is the first U.S. carrier to detail the damage that began to emerge in at the tail end of the first quarter, although United Airlines said Monday that it would record a pretax loss of $2.1 billion, confirming what most had