Warren Buffett spent years telling anyone who would listen that airlines were a value trap. He famously said a far-sighted capitalist should have shot down Orville Wright’s plane at Kitty Hawk. And then he sold every airline stock he owned during the pandemic, worth north of $4 billion, at a loss.
“It turned out I was wrong,” the Oracle of Omaha later said, adding that he’d made an “understandable mistake” given the unforeseen loss in the industry, according to Yale School of Management.
So when Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing landed on Friday, May 15, revealing a brand-new $2.65 billion stake in Delta Air Lines (DAL), the market paid attention. Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B) has built a reputation for holding many of its top stock positions for years, and in some cases decades, reflecting the firm’s low-turnover, high-conviction investment approach.
That long-term strategy has made Berkshire’s portfolio one of the most closely watched models for investors seeking ideas for backtesting and portfolio replication. Berkshire’s latest reported 13F filing for the first quarter of 2026 showed roughly $263.1 billion in managed 13F securities, with its top 10 holdings accounting for 90.72% of the portfolio. Its largest position remained Apple, with Berkshire holding 227.9 million shares, WhaleWisdom noted.
This is Greg Abel’s Berkshire now. The new CEO is making his first major portfolio statement, and he chose a 101-year-old airline — specifically, the best-run airline in America.
Whether this is a new chapter for Berkshire’s investing philosophy or simply a recognition that Delta today is a fundamentally different business than the airline Buffett walked away from, it is a signal worth unpacking carefully.
Berkshire’s $2.65B Delta stake, and what Abel sees that Buffett didn’t
Berkshire acquired 39,809,456 shares of Delta Air Lines valued at approximately $2.65 billion, according to the firm’s 13F filing, making it one of the largest new positions Berkshire has disclosed in recent years.
The bull case for Delta under Abel’s framework appears rooted in three structural advantages the airline has built since the pandemic that simply did not exist when Buffett exited in 2020.
Delta’s revenue mix has fundamentally shifted. Premium cabin revenue grew 14% year over year in the March quarter of 2026, according to Delta’s April 8 earnings release. Loyalty and related revenue, including American Express remuneration of over $2 billion, grew 10%. These revenue streams are stickier, higher margin, and far less sensitive to fuel price swings than the commodity-priced main cabin seats that defined airline economics in Buffett’s era.
Delta’s balance sheet is the best in the airline’s history. Adjusted net debt fell to $13.5 billion at March quarter end, a reduction of $760 million from the end of 2025 and below 2019 levels, with investment-grade ratings at all three major agencies. Free cash flow of $1.2 billion in a single quarter, with liquidity of $8.1 billion, is not the financial profile of a structurally broken business, according to the earnings statement.
Delta’s maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) operation is becoming a meaningful standalone growth engine. MRO revenue increased more than $200 million year over year in Q1, and Delta TechOps became the first North American airline MRO with full overhaul capability across both LEAP-1A and LEAP-1B engines, according to the release.
