Competitive Comparison

American Airlines vs. Delta Air Lines

A deleveraging turnaround bet against the industry's most consistently profitable operator — the honest gap between the airline I own and the one I don't.

Metric	American Airlines (AAL)	Delta Air Lines (DAL)
PEG ratio	Not disclosed in public data as of this writing	Not consistently disclosed across providers
EV/EBITDA	12.01x	9.52x
Market cap	$7.60B	$38.22B
P/E ratio (TTM)	~32.34 (sources vary)	13.96 (forward 9.96)

Market cap, P/E, PEG, EV/EBITDA, and capex sourced via public filings and financial-data aggregators (GuruFocus, StockAnalysis, company earnings releases), as of August 2026. PEG ratio sourced primarily from GuruFocus where available; different providers use different growth-rate assumptions, so figures elsewhere for the same stock can vary by several multiples. Gold-highlighted column(s) indicate the name(s) actually held in this book.

Why American, not Delta — an honest admission

Delta is, by most measures, the better-run airline: more consistent margins, a stronger balance sheet, and a lower EV/EBITDA (9.52x vs. American's 12.01x) that reflects real earned credibility with the market. I hold American specifically because it's a lower-cost-basis, higher-risk deleveraging bet — the thesis is that American's debt paydown trajectory as free cash flow improves is where the incremental return sits, not that American is a better business than Delta today. This is a case where the comparison genuinely favors the competitor on quality; I'm holding the riskier name deliberately, sized small, for the specific reason that the deleveraging story is still unpriced relative to a name like Delta that's already earned its premium.