How Delta CEO Ed Bastian built a massive partnership with American Express that now generates over 10% of the airline’s revenue

In 1996, the same year Delta Air Lines transported the Olympic flame from Athens, Greece, to Los Angeles, the Olympic Games were held in its hometown of Atlanta. That same year, the carrier launched a partnership with American Express that would change the company’s trajectory: a co-branded credit card allowing Amex users to redeem Delta SkyMiles. 

Nearly three decades later, the credit card—along with a raft of other perks—accounted for $8 billion, or about 10%, of Delta’s revenue in 2025. According to Delta CEO Ed Bastian, the co-branded credit card’s spending nears 1% of the U.S. GDP annually—a figure that reflects the sheer volume of transactions flowing through the partnership across millions of cardholders.

“As Delta’s brand started to move and people started to see it as a premium brand, as a differentiated experience, Amex was critical to that because we see Amex as the premium credit card in the business,” Bastian told Fortune’s Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell on the latest episode of Fortune’s Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast.

But the relationship wasn’t always so seamless.

From friction to friendship

For years, Delta and Amex struggled with a fundamental question: whose customer was it?

“We........

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