It's Friday, February twelve. I'm Oscar Mrors from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. There's only one airline left where you can book a flight with no one in the middle seat at least until the end of April, and that's on Delta. Despite a pandemic, most people just want the cheapest fair possible, and Delta has even lost money with this plan, but they feel like they're building up some goodwill when business
travelers come back. Scott McCartney, middle seat columnists at The Wall Street Journal, joins us for more. Thanks for joining, Scott. Good to be with you. I wanted to talk about the last airline who is still blocking the middle seats on flights. Delta announced that they're going to be extending their middle seat blockage for at least one more month, to the end of April. Now, a lot of the airlines were doing this throughout the pandemic. Most of them
ended just at the tail end of last year. But Delta is kind of betting that they'll build up some good will and at least consumer confidence in them. But they're losing a lot of money. They're being beat out by cheaper flights. That still is king. Everybody wants that cheapest flight that they can get, so Scott tell us a little bit more about it. That's right, Delta's extended through the end of April. They're paying a huge financial
penalty for this. It's very clear. Before the pandemic and the last half of two thousand nineteen, Delta was the most profitable airline in the US and then in the last half of two thousand twenty it had flipped to the airline with the biggest losses. Delta is getting a revenue premium, so the people who are flying Delta are paying more, and presumably that's because not having somebody in the middle seat is attractive to them, but there just
aren't enough of them. The Delta's overall revenue is much weaker than other airlines, and you can see it. Delta has been filling about of its seats, Americans filling more than sixty percent of its seats, so Americans carrying a lot more people on each flight, and even though people are paying a little bit more to Delta doesn't nearly make up for it. We've all seen the pictures of really packed flights. Everybody with their masks on sitting really
close to each other. Everybody kind of sees that and they say, wow, that's scary. Maybe we shouldn't be flying. But you know, that's not really how it played out in practicality. Delta lost a lot of business to other airlines with really cheap bears, like Spirit packing people in there. You know, the lesson of this is that people do want cheap fares, and that's really always been the lesson of the airline industry when airlines have tried on a
large scale basis to offer more room more comfort. You know, years back, American did more room throughout coach and people just weren't willing to pay enough. People weren't willing to pay extra for it. I looked at some particular markets and it was fascinating. Um, Atlanta Chicago is a good market to look at. Its Delta is the biggest airline in that market, obviously because of its giant Atlanta hub, but United's in their Americans in there, so you have
a lot of competition on that that route. And when you look at it for the third quarter prime time in the pandemic, Delta lost market share. It's fairs held up pretty well in that market compared to the other guys, But Spirits slashed it's fairs, and Spirit was nine of the market going in, and Spirits average fair one way was thirty four dollars, and you know, it's just sort of ridiculous, sixty eight dollar round trip tickets between Atlanta
and Chicago. The Spirit was up of the market, and so it was pretty clear evidence that given the choice empty middle seat or cheap fair, more people were opting for cheap fair. So, I mean, it doesn't really seem like it's working out for them. Delta, for its part, says they're selling peace of mind to those people that kind of want to be a little more spaced out. What's their big bet that it's just going to come back once vaccines are in place and more people are
traveling and all that. I think the way to look at it is that Delta is not worried about winning the pandemic. Delta is playing the long game here and really marketing to people who aren't traveling. And what they're saying is we will take care of you better than other airlines. And they think that when business travel does start to come back, when people who have been afraid to fly for the past year. Now when they start
coming back that they will opt for Delta over other guys. So, you know, the pandemic is costing them a huge amount of money, but essentially they hope to get it back in a sense when things get better, by doing better than their competitors in the recovery. We've talked a little bit about this before, you know, just kind of the
science of flying and and virus transmission. You know, a lot of people are saying, well, it's really safe because the planes have these really good ventilation systems, but there are studies that suggest that, you know, proximity matters. We've talked about this, you know, the people right in front of you, the people right in back of you. It's kind of a both sides. Whether more bodies in the plane could make you more susceptible to get into virus,
there is a common sense logic to this. I think there's no doubt that more bodies in the airplane increase your chances of contracting the virus. On the other hand, the risk is very small to begin with, and it's small to begin with because of ventilation on airplanes. It's small to begin with because there are fairly rigid mask
rules now, and that does make a difference. So what you're talking about is increased risk off a very small risk to begin with, And so airlines argue that's not significant. Other people have argued, well, it may be significant, but there is acknowledgement that it's still a small risk even
with somebody in the middle seat. That said, I think being shoulder to shoulder with a stranger these days, you know, sort of flies in the face of common sense when we're told to socially distance since day six ft apart. And then so that's sort of what Delta is thinking. They say they're not doing this for safety, they're doing it because it's what customers, what they think customers want. Well, there you go. Delta is the only game in town if you want that middle seat blocked out at least
until the end of April. Scott McCartney, middle seat calumnist at the Wall Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us. Always good to be with you. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big news stories. You can check me out in the Daily Dive podcast every money to Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast