Ed Bastian
Chief Executive Officer at Delta Air Lines
Well, thank you, Julie, and good morning. We appreciate everyone joining us today.
In a challenging operating environment for the entire industry, I want to thank our customers for their patience and understanding as we restore the reliability that you've come to expect from Delta. I'll speak more to the operation in a moment, but the good news is that we're making great progress to deliver the best-in-class experience that our customers deserve, and I'm pleased with our July performance to date.
This morning, we reported June quarter earnings per share of $1.44 with $1.4 billion of operating income and a 12% margin on revenues that were close to 2019 levels. Results improved throughout the quarter with revenue in the month of June 4% ahead of the June 2019 number, with a June month operating margin of 16.5%. So it was only 3.5 points lower than June of 2019 despite a near doubling in fuel prices and our schedule only 82% restored.
We generated $1.6 billion in free cash flow in the quarter, which brings us close to $2 billion year-to-date, reflecting the robust demand environment and enabling further delevering as we work to regain an investment-grade balance sheet.
June quarter performance represents an important financial inflection and resulted in a profit-sharing accrual for our employees. These results are a validation of the dedication of our people who have done an amazing job under the most difficult of circumstances imaginable over the past two-and-half years.
We're happy to have been able to reward eligible employees with a 4% raise on May 1, and we're looking forward to Delta people celebrating well-deserved and meaningful profit-sharing payouts for years to come with our return to profitability.
Rebuilding Delta's operation during an unprecedented surge in customer demand has been a remarkable feat, and I'm grateful to our people for everything they do on a daily basis. While the demand and revenue landscape is the best we've seen, the operational environment for the entire industry remains uniquely challenged. I'd like to sincerely apologize to those who have been impacted by cancellations, delays and long wait times over the last two months. This quarter's operational performance has not been up to our industry-leading standards, and restoring operational excellence is our top priority.
Steps we've taken include the strategic direction to hold capacity at the June month level for the remainder of this year as well as additional investments to restore operational integrity, including earlier boarding procedures and operational buffers. We are pleased with the progress and July is off to a very good start with a 99.2% completion factor through the first 11 days of the month, which is exactly on par with the same holiday period in 2019. In fact, over the last seven days of this period, we've had only 25 cancellations worldwide on over 30,000 departures. Over this period, 84% of our flights have arrived on time, as measured within 14 minutes of scheduled arrival.
Since the start of 2021, we've hired 18,000 new employees and our active headcount is at 95% of 2019 levels, despite only restoring less than 85% of our capacity. The chief issue we're working through is not hiring but a training and experience bubble. Coupling this with the lingering effects of COVID and we've seen a reduction in crew availability and higher overtime.
By ensuring capacity does not outstrip our resources and working through our training pipeline, we'll continue to further improve our operational integrity. While our actions delayed the improvement we expect in nonfuel cost, we know the best path to driving a competitive cost structure is running a high-quality operation. And the most important point I'd leave with you is that the issues we're facing are temporary. We are already seeing significant improvement and operating in line with our record-setting performance levels of July of 2019.
Turning to the revenue environment. Strong demand and pricing trends are continuing into the September quarter. We expect revenue to be up 1% to 5% versus 2019 with an 11% to 13% operating margin. Consumer demand continues to maintain strength as we look to the fall, and we're seeing steady progress in the return of business and international travel.
Like all consumer businesses, we're closely monitoring consumer behavior and have yet to see any meaningful pullback in demand. However, if demand were to weaken, I'm confident we have the tools and resources to remain profitable through the cycle. The last time an economic recession hit our business was in 2009 and absent fuel hedge losses at that time, which we no longer utilize, Delta was profitable that year. Comparing then to now, Delta's business has structurally evolved in significant ways over the last decade, building a trusted and premium consumer brand with proven competitive advantages within a much improved industry.
Our revenues are far more diversified with much larger contributions from our premium product offerings and high-margin loyalty business as well as our growing MRO and cargo businesses. And our balance sheet and access to capital are much stronger as proven during the pandemic.
We've recently made major customer enhancements that will strengthen our brand for years to come, including recent openings this quarter of world-class airport facilities at LAX and New York's LaGuardia Airport, two largest markets for travel in the country as well as new Delta Sky Clubs in key markets. We spent over a decade building our reputation as the most reliable airline globally, but we're not only determined to deliver that same standard of excellence but are investing to bring it to an even higher level.
In the face of the pandemic, financially, we've been profitable over the last 12 months, with margins this summer beginning to approach 2019 levels despite meaningfully lower capacity and a doubling in fuel prices. In my opinion, a pretty remarkable turn in performance.
With our results in the first half of the year, we remain confident in our 2024 targets for earnings per share of over $7, more than $4 billion in free cash flow and a return to investment-grade metrics.
Now I'll turn it over to Glen to talk about the revenue environment.
