Nine days into the government shutdown, and reports of flight delays are growing. This comes amid an already complicated time for the air travel industry, with tariffs, slumping consumer sentiment and some international travelers just not wanting to visit the U.S. right now. 

Still, though, Delta posted solid third quarter results Thursday morning. Earnings and revenue both surpassed market expectations. In an economy that is so turbulent for so many consumers right now, what’s keeping Delta flying high?

The answer, and this story of inequality and the travel industry, is brought to you by the letter K.

“So there’s a macroeconomic term that we’re using, which is the K-shaped economy,” said Jan Freitag, a travel analyst with CoStar. He said right now, most consumers are on the down-sloping part of the K, pinching pennies when it comes to travel.

But there’s also an upper end of the income strata.

“The one-percenters, the 0.1-percenters. They're out there, they're traveling, they're flying front of the plane,” Freitag said.

And so Delta has enlarged the front of their planes to cater to those one percenters, said Richard Aboulafia at Aerodynamic Advisory. 

“ They had the good sense to switch to a higher mix of premium cabin products and more of an emphasis on international routes,” he said.

That focus on the well-heeled has paid off. Delta’s president said last month their average customer earns well over $100,000 a year, adding, “We’re at the top end, and that seems to be good.”

Well what’s good for Delta isn’t so for the airlines that cater to the rest of us. Those budget carriers are doing “not very well at all,” said Aboulafia. “Of course, led by the next bankruptcy for Spirit.”

Spirit, Frontier, and JetBlue have all struggled to turn a profit as cost-conscious flyers pull back. That’s left some airlines looking to level-up their clientele, said Nicolas Owens, an aviation analyst with Morningstar. Case in point: Southwest.

“They're gonna start selling premium seats up front, and assign seatings and so forth because they did not have, you know, imagine going to the supermarket and the top two shelves of cereal are empty. Like they had nothing there for someone to pay more for,” he said.

Right now, coaxing those who can to pay more seems to be the key to a successful takeoff in the air travel industry.