Bastian characterized business travel as being "kind of a wait and see. They're trying to understand what's going on with omicron. They're trying to understand when their offices — if they're not back, when they're going to open."
"Small businesses ... is something we haven't talked as much about historically, but it's just a big pool as the corporate space is for us," Bastian said. "And then when those offices open, starting this spring, we think it's going to pick up where we left off in December and grow from there.""A lot of business travel is triggered by going to visit companies, and the companies are closed. It makes it a little more difficult to do that," Bastian said.
Delta made domestic share gains on the corporate side of its business during the pandemic, "a meaningful and an outsized share gain," according to Bastian, mostly among the biggest corporates focused on premium bookings. "They appreciated the work we did around blocking the middle seats for the entire length of the pandemic while it was quite active," he said.