Delta eyes Election Day travel pullback as profits climb

Delta Air Lines reported higher profits Thursday despite a drag from a big information technology outage and said an anticipated November pullback in travel should lift after US elections.

The big US carrier's quarterly results were dragged lower by a $380 million hit over the Crowdstrike outage, which resulted in some 7,000 flight cancellations over a five-day period in July. The funds went mostly to customer refunds.

Profits were $1.3 billion, up 15 percent from the year-ago period. Revenues edged up one percent to $15.7 billion.

Executives said the company also expected an impact in the fourth quarter from Hurricane Milton, which barreled into Florida last night. Delta has canceled 600 flights so far.

Still, the company projected higher fourth-quarter profits on a two to four percent increase in revenues.

Bookings are depressed around the US presidential election, but executives described that as a blip amid otherwise solid demand.

"You have markets that are performing incredibly well with positive momentum in October, and then again, as soon as the week after the election is complete," said Delta President Glen Hauenstein.

"So if you took a trend line, you'd see these two weeks just being way off trend."

Delta had been among the carriers that warned in July that industry oversupply was depressing fares and profitability.

But since that time, airlines have trimmed capacity, leading to "an improved equilibrium between demand and supply as industry growth moderated," Hauenstein said.

Delta shares were unchanged shortly after midday.

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