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.
Exactly other airlines with union always get less % than DL
Not true. Alaska Airlines which is much smaller than Delta got 11.46% this year and they are union.
My father was a captain for delta and retired in the early 2000’s. Delta pilots are some of, if not the highest paid of any domestic carrier and have the best benefits plan. The pilots consistently told the FAs they were insane not to unionize but the FAs based out of the hen house (Atl) always swayed the vote to no on unionization. Delta doesn’t pay the FAs better than other carriers because they love them and want to be generous. Delta is petrified of unions because they know they are better for employees. All the “unions protect the dead weight” and “unions penalize the best employees” is total crap fed to people by corporations. The middle class was never stronger or larger in the US than when union membership was at its highest. That’s not a coincidence. No corporation is an employees friend and if they can find a way to maximize profit at the workers expense, they will. I love Delta, heck it paid for my childhood and college, but they are not some loving benevolent organization.
What an ignorant comment. The union doesn’t receive any of the company profit sharing. It only goes to the employees and based on the percentage the company says and qualifying hours worked by the employee.
This was a reply to the person saying it’s good to fire people at will not to your comment Jack. (All these freaking ad pop-ups place my reply in the wrong spot)
Your dad was correct!
Delta employees would be foolish not to unionize. At Delta, you are an at-will worker, which means you can be fired at any time for any reason with or without cause with or without notification. A union contract is essential and priceless to preserve jobs.
Actually, the opposite. It’s a good thing to be able to be hired and fired at will (and vice versa) in a well run company.
Why on earth would I want the small percentage of low- performing, hostile, dead weight coworkers to have their job protected? That only jeopardizes my profit sharing since it would inevitably hurt quality of the product.
Excessive job protection of the people who NEED to be fired is an absolutely terrible thing
The preceding message was shilled to you by the billionaire ceos of Americans.
The union doesn’t protect workers from being fired, it protects the workers from being fired unjustly. it makes sure that the company is following proper procedures and laws. If mgt isn’t being lazy and follow the steps, employees can still be released.
@Pete…haha! Get your greedy hands away from their money.
Pete-who exactly are these employees that are being fired for any reason/without cause? Is the the exemplary employee that provides extra care and service that promotes Delta’s brand or a slacker who provides noting to the customers, also known as the passengers.
If unions are good enough for Delta pilots, they’re good enough for Delta’s in-flight. Let’s not forget without the pressure of a union, these employees would get nothing. And if a union goes away, the employ ees lose. Not to mention a Union contract equals job security. So you can spin all the anti-non-union garbage you want, Delta employees are far better with the Union than without.
Honest question – do you think DL flight attendants are looking at their colleagues at UA/AA struggling to ratify contracts, always on the brink of a strike, toxic work environments and say, “Oh yeah, I want to be part of the struggle”?
It’s the FAs based out of ATL that have this strange fear of hurting deltas feelings if they unionize. Seriously they do, I have actually talked to them about it and it’s something like “well they were nice enough to hire me so I would feel bad if I voted for a union” kind of response. It’s amazing
Sometimes it takes a little time but it’s always better to negotiate than just take what someone decides to give you. And without a contract, any of it can be taken away at any point. You have zero security.
Delta pilots have an amazing contract! Do you think they are idiots? Answer is they are not. They even have it in their contract that if say American got a raise higher than them during the contract period, they get to match plus 1% and the if United came in and got an even higher raise, they get to match that one as well plus 1% to keep them at the top.
Union management has to be some of the most miserable people in the country. Always negative and never have anything good to say. How sad.
Personably because they are forced to deal with the ghouls of the corporate world every day. Kind of how if someone is a cop long enough they tend to think everyone sucks and is a criminal.
Probably not personally
Vote in the AFA and you can say goodbye to pay raises for years, and also welcome to full month reserve, no matter what seniority. Gone will be the days of near perfect schedules. Oh, and yes, in order to receive these awesome changes you have to pay for it every month, and you’ll never be able to vote the union out when you realize the awful mistake you made.
Did you copy that right from ed or did he let you paraphrase it after you wiped his residue off your face?