Glen Hauenstein: Well, I mean, this is all an opinion, right, as that, revenge travel, I think has years to go, particularly in long haul international. When you look at the aging of the demographics that people in their retirement years want to travel, and they were robbed of the ability to travel for three years, and we weren’t able to accommodate last year. I think as we continued accommodation of that for the next several years until that revenge travel catch up. I think domestically we’ve done that. Revenge travel was early in the process, and we’re kind of at our new equilibrium, and that gives us the opportunity to optimize as we move forward. And do they look different? They always look different.
Ted Reed: As for destinations are we more in unique – is it more unique transatlantic that they’re looking at or more the traditional transatlantic or something else?
Glen Hauenstein: I think it’s more the traditional Italy, Spain; those are two of the Italy, Spain, Greece are such hot spots. Portugal is a hot spot, and I think during the peak summer we’re really excited about the prospect of bringing SAS along with us and now having hubs in Copenhagen and Stockholm that will allow us to have even more destinations in Europe than we serve today.
Ted Reed: All right. Thank you, Glen.
Operator: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Kelly Yamanouchi from Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Your line is live.
Kelly Yamanouchi: Thanks. Ed, you mentioned having 10% more employees today than pre-pandemic and essentially driving the same level of operations and the opportunity to get efficient. I was wondering if that means growing operations with the same number of employees or potentially cutting the staffing level.
Ed Bastian: Hi, Kelly. No there’s no plans just to cut staffing levels at all. This is about our people being able to garner more experience because a lot of the new employees that we’ve added over the last few years are adding to that 10% and continuing to be a bit more efficient in productivity and the staffing levels. But no, we have no intention to make any reductions in people.
Kelly Yamanouchi: Okay, great. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Leslie Josephs from CNBC. Your line is live.
Leslie Josephs: Hi, good morning, everyone. Wondering if you are seeing any increased bookings since United and Alaska have had to ground their Max 9s? And then separately maybe this is a question more for Glen, but do you think you’re done with the measures that you had to take last year in terms of the SkyMiles program and lounges to sort of combat crowding, since this year is going to be so busy, and if you have enough premium seats to offer the market currently?
Glen Hauenstein: Well, I’ll take the second question first, is, we made some serious changes to our programs that were designed to really put the right people in the right categories so that we could deliver industry leading premium experiences. And as you know, while they were announced in the fall, most of them don’t take into effect until 2025. And I think what we’ve estimated is that should – we should be done without those kinds of major changes to our programs. Of course, those programs are always changing, but I think the changes moving forward will be much more minimal. So I think that’s behind us. We’ll see how that plays out by the end of this year and into 2025. And your other question was on the Max…
Leslie Josephs: On booking. Oh yeah, since the grounding.
Glen Hauenstein: We’ve seen a small uptick specifically in Seattle, but Seattle is a small portion of our entire system. So it’s kind of minimal in the grander scheme of things, but it’s relevant in Seattle.
Leslie Josephs: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Mary Schlangenstein from Bloomberg News. Your line is live.
Mary Schlangenstein: Yeah, my question was asked. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Alison Sider from Wall Street Journal. Your line is live.
Alison Sider: Thank you. I was wondering, do you still think Delta still has the same advantage over rivals just in terms of reliability in its operation? Is that something that you’re kind of working on?
Ed Bastian: Hi, Allie, this is Ed. The one thing that we’ve seen over the last couple of years which has been great for customers is that the overall reliability in the industry has improved and carriers increasingly are competing over operational performance rather than some other things in the past that people may have been focused against. And I think that’s great and I think it pushes us to be even better, and I think it’s a great outcome for the industry as a whole. So, yes, the competition is definitely more focused on reliability than ever before. And I still expect Delta to maintain its premium lead in that sector.
Alison Sider: And then if I could ask about sort of labor shortages, are you concerned at all or starting to feel the impact of a shortage of maintenance workers? Is that something you expect to come to the head this year?
Ed Bastian: We are not experiencing any issues around labor shortages. Maybe in very small isolated places we still have some additional people we’d like to bring in, but we are at where we need to be. And for us it’s less about the shortages, it’s more about the new people that we brought on continuing to gain experience, and that’s a big deal, particularly in the maintenance area.
Alison Sider: Thanks.
Ed Bastian: Thank you, Ali. Matthew, we have time for one final question, please.
Operator: Certainly. Your last question is coming from Robert Silk from Travel Weekly. Your line is live.
