As has become tradition at Delta Air Lines, employees celebrated Valentine’s Day 2025 with the receipt of five extra weeks of pay thanks to another profitable year and generous profit-sharing formula at the Atlanta-based carrier.
2025 Profit Sharing Day At Delta Lines: Big Bucks In The Pocket Of Every Employee
Each year on Valentine’s Day, Delta employees receive a profit sharing bonus commensurate with the carrier’s profits the previous year. Rather than a flat fee to each employee, employees receive a percentage of their annual earnings based upon how profitable the carrier was. This year, based on 2024 profits, each employee received an approximately 10% bonus on their annual earnings. That amounts to about $1.4 billion in total, representing about 30% of Delta’s total $4.6 billion profit in 2024. Over the last decade, Delta has awarded its employees over $10 billion in profit sharing.
This year’s profit sharing payout is more than American Airlines and United Airlines combined.
And the loyalty is reciprocal: there’s a reason why Delta employees are generally regarded as best among peers.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian remarked:
“Every day, Delta people prove themselves to be difference makers in this industry. I’m proud to recognize their unmatched professionalism, teamwork and dedication to excellence with one of our strongest profit sharing years in Delta’s history.”
Delta’s flight attendants are alone among major US carriers in being non-unionized. This year, the union response is rather muted, praising the profit sharing and urging flight attendants to “lock in” the profit sharing formula by unionizing:
Delta pays its workers more than American or United, pays them for boarding, and of course the profit sharing is simply magnitudes better due to the carrier’s higher profitability. Plus, workers keep more of their paycheck each month instead of paying union dues.
It’s a sweet time to work for Delta…and with another healthy year of profits projected, next year is looking even better.
image: Delta Air Lines
If they’re foolish enough to unionize, that profit sharing will go directly into the union’s pocket, not theirs. All that will be gained is that the lowest-performing among them will be protected from being held accountable.