Investors are hoping that Delta Air Lines (DAL) can build on a solid second-quarter earnings report with another strong performance in the company’s Q3 earnings call, which is slated for Thursday morning.
Delta posted a quarterly revenue record in Q2, bringing in $12.5 billion and prompting the airline to boost its Q3 outlook.
While CivicScience isn’t in the business of giving stock advice, it can gauge Delta’s popularity with U.S. consumers. In a late September / early October survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults, Delta came away with solid favorability figures:
Overall, Americans are about twice as likely to harbor good feelings toward Delta than they are to dislike the company. The question is whether those feelings will continue to translate into airplane tickets.
Spoiler alert: the answer appears to be yes. As of Q3 2019, 17% of respondents said they would fly Delta within the next six months. This figure has slightly improved quarter-over-quarter (up from 16%).
That figure puts Delta ahead of competitors like American (15%) and United (11%) — and well beyond smaller airlines like JetBlue, Allegiant, and Spirit — but still trailing the clear leader, Southwest (23%).
That includes more than one-third of Delta fans planning to use the airline in the next half-year.
Who’s Flying Delta?
Delta is held in high regard among frequent travelers — including both those who leave the continent frequently and those who travel from state to state. However, those groups are even more likely to be fans of Southwest Airlines.
Demographics
While positive feelings toward Delta were more common among wealthier and more educated Americans, negative responses were more common among these groups as well. This suggests that these demographics have a greater level of experience with Delta.
In general, men also tended to be more opinionated about Delta than women. Women were 13% more likely to say they didn’t have strong feelings about the airline one way or the other.
Age did not play a major role in respondents’ feelings toward Delta.
And finally, while we can’t tell Delta what kind of in-flight movies to play for passengers, we can say that fans of drama movies also tend to be fans of the airline.
In case you needed more, here are some other insights about Delta fans:
RED-EYE FLIGHT: Delta fans get substantially more sleep than those who don’t like the airline or feel neutral toward it.
BY AIR AND BY LAND: Delta fans are also more favorable toward Tesla cars than those who are neutral to Delta. Conversely, those who don’t like Delta are the most likely to dislike Tesla.
JET-STREAM: Delta fans are more likely to stream music than those who are neutral or unfavorable to the airline. Thirteen percent of Delta favorables stream music for three hours per day or more, compared to 6% of unfavorables.
Who knew?
