If Delta Was An Apartment Community

By Todd Katler

If Delta Airlines was a multifamily community, 41% of its income would be rentable items.

That’s right. Delta’s earnings statement from Q1 2025 shows that 41% of the airline’s total income comes from ticket-related premium products — aisle seats, window seats, premium comfort seats and that ultra-fancy Delta One premium cabin experience.

Let’s break this down to have a deeper look:
Let’s say you decided to take a trip, selected Delta as the airline and then booked your flight. Now imagine if there was a little blurb at the end of your booking about adding a premium service, but you missed it and just wanted to get your task completed.

If that was the experience, how many premium products would Delta sell?

A couple of weeks later, you get to the airport, and it’s a madhouse. The line for the coffee is worse than trying to get into Coachella. There are kids screaming, people pushing and half the group pestering TSA agents about whether it’s shoes on or off now. You may think about getting a better seat, but there’s a couple yelling at the gate agent that it is her fault TSA wanted to inspect their bag or had to ask them three times to put their shoes back on. Now, the gate crew has the nerve to ask them to check the bag that’s large enough to transport a small village. The whole process is just a notch above controlled chaos.

If that was the experience, how many premium products would Delta sell?

But that isn’t the experience. Right from the beginning of the booking process, you are elegantly offered choices for premium products, which are thoughtfully and efficiently displayed and easy to select. You don’t need to call anyone or visit the counter when you get to the airport. It’s the products you want to make your trip better, the way you want them and with barely any effort required. A quick and easy path to circumventing the chaos. That’s why Delta’s Q1 income is 41% premium products.

Apply these scenarios to your multifamily operations. Do you know what your premium products (aka rentable items) are? Do you know what’s available? Do you make it easy to obtain them? Imagine talking to a Delta agent and asking them, “How many comfort-plus seats do you have on a particular flight?” only to watch them open a desk drawer to pull out a three-ring binder with a bunch of wrinkly spreadsheets that may or may not be up to date.

If that were the experience, how many premium products would Delta sell?

Multifamily teams are giving their residents the chaotic airport experience. They want to rent garages and storage spaces, and they’re getting distractions, delays and who knows what else. If the only way to enhance your airline ticket post-purchase was to call or go to the desk, would you really do it? Probably not. This same logic applies to multifamily operations. It’s time to give your residents the power to select the rentable items they want, when they want them, from their phones and in seconds! If this were an option, would you enable it? And then ask yourself…

…if that were the experience, how many rentable items would you sell?

Also—TSA says it’s shoes back on for now, in case you were wondering.