Inside Delta CEO Ed Bastian’s turnaround playbook—from bankruptcy to most profitable U.S. airline

In today’s CEO Daily: Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell sits down with Delta CEO Ed Bastian.

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Good morning. Ed Bastian has been the CEO of Delta Air Lines for a decade and an executive at the company for almost 30 years. As CFO and president, Bastian led the airline through a significant turnaround that began with filing for bankruptcy in 2008. It all paid off: Today, Delta is the most profitable airline in America.

Delta enjoys this title despite the fact that it gives away a chunk of profits to its 100,000 employees every year—and thanks in part to a long-term partnership with American Express, which Bastian has nurtured to be extremely lucrative. Delta-Amex cards are now responsible for over 10% of Delta’s total revenue.

I flew to Delta’s headquarters in Atlanta to interview Bastian for the Fortune 500: Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast, and we sat among historic planes in the airline’s corporate museum hangar and talked for nearly an hour about his leadership playbook. When we spoke about his turnaround strategy, Bastian cited two other micro-turnarounds that........

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