Delta’s New CEO on Why the Airline Won’t Be a Budget Carrier

Ed Bastian left the carrier in part because it was keeping fares too low. He explains why he won’t make that mistake again.

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By Justin Bachman

August 4, 2016 at 8:33 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

This article is part of the August 8, 2016 issue of businessweek.

The following is a condensed and edited interview with Ed Bastian, CEO, Delta Air Lines.

Why did you quit the airline in 2004 and return six months later to help manage the bankruptcy when then-CEO Jerry Grinstein called?
I was really vocal when I left about the company’s strategy—they were making some really dumb decisions. The biggest one was trying to turn Delta into a low-fare airline. When you have employees making sacrifices—pilots took 50 percent pay cuts—you have an obligation to those people to use their investment in the company wisely. And to just take it and plow it into low fares was lunacy. I thought we were making really bad decisions. And Jerry called me and asked me to come back, and he said he agreed and said he was changing out the commercial leadership of the organization.