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© 2023. Delta Air Lines, Inc.
ENVIRONMENT
Eliminating Our Climate Impact from Flying
Fleet renewal is our greatest opportunity to improve our fuel efficiency and emissions intensity. We have established sustainability considerations as one of the core pillars guiding our fleet strategy and capital allocation decisions concerning our fleet.
We plan to continue our fleet renewal initiative to support our environmental sustainability efforts. We expect fleet renewal to play a significant role in progressing our climate goals. In the short term, this means aiming for annual improvements in fleet-wide fuel efficiency each year through 2035, which, if achieved, would represent a meaningful reduction in fuel consumption rate from 2019 to 2035. Following 2035, we envision the availability of next-generation aircraft technology, such as the deployment of novel airframe designs and/or advanced propulsion technologies that could continue to improve fuel efficiency.
In 2022, we took delivery of 69 aircraft, including 42 next-generation mainline aircraft1, that were, on average, 25% more fuel efficient per seat mile than aircraft retired since 2019, contributing to a fleet-wide fuel efficiency improvement of 4.2% compared to 2019.
42
next-generation aircraft Delta received in 2022
25%
more fuel efficient per seat than aircraft retired since 2019
A combination of fleet renewal, operational initiatives and other factors resulted in overall fuel savings of roughly 151 million gallons in comparison to our fuel efficiency from 2019.
In May 2022, introducing the A321neo, our most fuel-efficient aircraft, boosted progress toward emissions intensity improvements. Over the next several years, we expect to continue on this path, growing other fuel-efficient fleets like the A220 family, the A350-900s and the A330-900s.
1 Excluding 737-900ERs
Small narrowbody gal/ASM/fuel
Large narrowbody gal/ASM/fuel
Widebody gal/ASM/fuel
Small narrowbody
Large narrowbody
Widebody
