Delta's profit sharing is impressive. No doubt about that. Hope everyone spends (or better yet, invests) it wisely. Good times never last forever.
But Anderson didn't pay out $1.5 billion to the employees out of the goodness of his heart. It wasn't a gift. It was a negotiated benefit by the PILOTS, which in the Delta universe benefits all at Delta. When the pilots have agreed to modifications of the DL profit sharing formula, DL unilaterally changes everyone's formula to match the pilots.
AA management offered 15% first dollar profit sharing to all employees in 2012, and before too long, the AA pilots gave 2/3 of it back to management in exchange for small raises/fewer furloughs, etc. Because all other AA unions went along with management's "benefits gained by one union will be shared by all unions" plan, that meant that the APFA and the TWU lost 2/3 of their profit sharing right off the bat. The APFA and the TWU should have never agreed to the lunacy that if one group made a bad deal in exchange for a few dollars, all union members at AA would go along with it. AA's union leaders failed to plan for the future, and thus failed their membership durin g the Ch 11.
Had AA emerged from bankruptcy and not been profitable, the only logical consequence would have been another trip back to bankruptcy court to trim wages yet again (like US did in its second Ch 11). So the small gains made by selling the profit sharing back to management on the cheap were not "guaranteed." Those gains would be swiftly lost in a second Ch 11. Since DL and UA were profitable in 2011 and 2012 (when the APA gave back 2/3 of its profit sharing), that demonstrated that the APA leadership was oblivious to the likely future. And of course, we all know the history - in every bankruptcy, there's at least one union that doesn't believe that the rules apply to it, and in AA's case, that was the APA, which rejected its TA and ended up with abrogation. Eventually, the APA ratified the TA with negligible changes.
AA's pilots are highly skilled (pilots), but 2012 showed us that they may not have been the best negotiators. They sold their profit sharing back to Horton for a pittance, and now they and the APFA are whining that AA's profits are huge and Doug Parker the ogre isn't sharing. Looks like a new entry in the dictionary for "chutzpah."
I despise Doug Parker, but CEOs don't give their employees gifts, especially employees represented by unions. Grandmothers give gifts, and Parker isn't anyone's grandmother.