PROFIT PILOT

CEO Ed Bastian has turned Delta Air Lines into the biggest cash machine in the industry, and delighted employees by sharing the wealth. Can he keep the good times rolling in rough economic weather?

- Shawn Tully

ON MONDAY, Feb. 17, Ed Bastian was at his condo in Deer Valley, Utah, with his fiancée, his youngest daughter, and her boyfriend, enjoying the final leg of a skiing getaway on Presidents’ Day weekend. The Delta Air Lines CEO was in a celebratory mood, still pumped from his company’s 100th anniversary party in January and from cheerleading at Delta’s annual Valentine's Day bash—where he and his employees had partied Mardi Gras–style to toast the airline's big annual profit-sharing distribution.

Around noon, an “emergency response” text flashed on Bastian’s iPhone. “My first reaction was that it was a drill,” Bastian tells Fortune. That wouldn't have been unusual: Delta frequently stages surprise test runs in which flight crews rehearse rescuing passengers from accidents, while looping in top managers, Bastian included, to practice their own emergency protocols.

But when Bastian read the message again, he says, “I realized it was a real accident.” A call to his head of safety revealed the truth: A Delta plane had crashed on landing and was sitting upside down on the tarmac at Toronto Pearson International Airport.

For the leader who had helped guide Delta through 9/11, bankruptcy, and the COVID pandemic, this was a trial like no other. Delta hadn't suffered a crash that caused fatalities in Bastian’s entire 26-year career there. “Undoubtedly that first hour was the toughest moment I've spent as CEO,” Bastian says. “I went from the high-est of highs to the lowest of lows. You just feel helpless.”