It’s not just Silicon Valley billionaires who are eager to usher in a second Trump administration. The airline industry, too, is apparently happy with his return to the White House.
Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines, said that he thinks the incoming Trump administration will be a “breath of fresh air,” mostly in regard to regulation and “overreach” from the Biden administration, according to reporting from the Associated Press and others.
His comments seemingly stem from the Biden administration’s cracking down on “junk fees” and the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) updated rules that make it easier for passengers to get refunds for cancellations. A group of airlines, including Delta, sued the DOT earlier this year over those new rules.
On top of that, Delta is also being investigated by the federal government after this past summer’s CrowdStrike outage, which kneecapped its operations. In the wake of that outage, Delta canceled hundreds of flights (far more than other airlines), and delayed more than 1,400 others, according to reporting from CBS News.
Delta subsequently sued CrowdStrike last month for the outage, asking for compensation and punitive damage resulting from that system failure.
We’ve reached out to Delta for additional comment.
The “fresh air” up there
While Bastian’s comments are catching attention, he’s not the only airline executive who has expressed optimism about Trump. Robert Jordan, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, recently said that he hoped the new administration would be “a bit more business-friendly.”
It appears that these executives are hopeful for a potential rollback of some of the new customer protections put in by Biden and current Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, as well as the potential for friendlier tax treatment.
To replace Buttigieg in January, Trump said he is nominating Sean Duffy, a former Republican Congressman from Wisconsin, and current host of a TV show on Fox Business.