US airlines expects rapidly spreading Omicron to delay recovery in air travel by two months
13 January 2022 - 17:53Delta Air Lines says the rapidly spreading Omicron variant will delay a recovery in travel by at least 60 days and contribute to a first-quarter loss but won’t derail the carrier’s expectation to remain profitable for the rest of 2022.
The omicron-related pause in recovery for corporate and international travel could last as long as 90 days, Bastian said on CNBC. While the Atlanta-based carrier projected pretax losses in January and February, it forecast a profit in March and meaningful earnings for the final three quarters and full year.
About 8,000 Delta employees have caught the virus over the past four weeks, Bastian said, though disruptions have decreased in recent days. At its peak in late December and early January, the virus and winter storms forced the airline to cancel as much as 10% of its flights. That shaved about $75m from fourth-quarter revenue and trimmed pretax profit to $170 million from Delta’s earlier forecast of $200 million to $250 million.
Delta’s adjusted fourth-quarter profit of 22c a share was a penny short of the average of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Adjusted net income of $143m gave Delta a second straight quarterly profit after excluding US financial aid. Revenue, excluding refinery operations, was $8.43bn, while analysts expected $8.45bn.
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