Yes. I'm very pleased to be in Napa Valley.
First of all, thank you for having me. And it's fabulous to be out here. I think it's not everyone's top of mind right now in our business, in transportation. It's actually interesting. It's the one market of the world where travel actually has not returned to post-Covid levels. In fact, it's less than half of what it had been because the two countries, not just economies, have been decoupling a little bit. And so it's so important, the fact that we have our leaders of both countries together, talking about how we can start back again, to start building trust and creating better relationships.
Absolutely.
So several things. First, jet fuel prices have doubled just since the start of the conflicts over the last 30, 60 days. We've had at Delta over $2 billion of higher cost in the current quarter. On a run rate basis, it's almost $10 billion a year. So huge amount of money. The way we've managed that first is building a brand that is resilient, that people understand it. Fuel prices are up. We're gonna have to find ways to cover it. We have a consumer base that is willing to pay a higher cost. We're not covering the whole thing. But in the current quarter, we're expecting to cover relatively half of the increase in price in a relatively short period of time, which is pretty good. The second thing we did over a decade ago, we bought our own refinery on the East coast in the Delaware River outside of Philadelphia called Monroe Energy. And in this quarter alone, we expect to save somewhere between $200 and $300 million of fuel cost, which is more than twice what we paid for it.
Well, there's several consumers out in the marketplace. People talk about the consumer. Our consumer is a higher end consumer and is incredibly resilient. We have seen the demand strength throughout the year. In fact, when the war started, it seemed like it even ticked up another notch. So we're seeing significant growth that we're continuing to see significant growth.
Take up another notch. Suddenly people were like, I need to buy now. I think there's a little bit of that. I think more important that people understand it. Typically when wars happen, people pull back and sit back. We've been through so much change, so much disruption. There's so many things coming at people. And I think some of this is the post-Covid effect. Say I'm not going to sit and wait to see what the next headline is going to be. I'm going to go now. I'm going to go as long as I feel safe and be willing to invest in myself, invest in our experience, see the people in the places I need to be at.
Well, our routes to the Atlantic, to Europe are doing very, very well. Now, I would say exit Europe, travelers point of sale into the U.S. has been down a bit. And that's a trend that we've seen for several years. But Americans specifically are going to Europe. We're launching just in the next week to Sardinia. We're launching to Malta, we're launching to Porto, just in three brand new routes for us in the midst of everything going on. So that tells you where the consumers want to be and who they are. And they're principally Americans wanting to invest in their experiences.
But when you understand our strategy, when I talk about our asset, our most important asset are our people. It's our culture protecting the people that get us through tough times. It's an even more important time to invest in them. So we were pleased to announce a couple of weeks ago that we'll be increasing everyone's wages at the company by 4% starting June 1st. That's our typical schedule. Every year, sometime in the spring that we announce the increases. And it's the most important investment I make. You know, there's a lot of things about this business that cost a lot of capital. But human capital is the most important capital that we have, and particularly in times of trouble, because they're the ones that are keeping customers coming back and providing that premium experience and opportunity for our brand to continue to rise.
They didn't go out of business because of fuel prices. They went out of business because they had a bad product that people didn't want, a bad strategy. Good people with a bad strategy. And we've hired a fair number of the Spirit people, as many of the other airlines are bringing their equipment in. You know, our industry continues to rationalise itself. And if you've got a good product that people want to pay for, you can grow. And you see at the lower end of the marketplace those airlines that don't have the quality of the experience, even though they're lower price point, they can't afford to offer the lower prices in the environment which we're in.
Innovation is life. Like airlines, people think about it as a transportation company. Airlines are a technology company. Whether it's the app and the ability to give consumers better control, their experience, better information, better displays, whether it's our own people having better data to make better information, whether it's the engine technologies we deploy. You know, we're in the high tech business fundamentally, but it's tech for human sake. And I think that's the other thing in this AI world, a lot of people get confused about tech for tech's sake. It's tech to make our people smarter. I love to call AI augmented intelligence, right? I don't know why we have to call it artificial. It should give people tools to do a better job, and then it gives them the opportunity to preserve and grow their development, not actually limit their opportunity.
Well, I did that, and it was more out of curiosity. I was never intending, but I was just curious because I was in the middle of writing it, and I said, I've never done that before in terms of used AI for something like that. So let me say, and I've done commencements in the past and it came out that there was a but it was very sterile. It wasn't my voice. Then people wanted to hear me and who I am, the soul, the warmth, the appreciation, not some algorithm of me. And so I and by the way, I thought the speech went quite well. That got the biggest applause from everyone in the room, because there is such lack of trust in the technology.
Well, no. Not necessarily. I think that over time it's going to make us better. It's going to make us smarter, not less, a bit better able to serve customers, be able to provide more attention to news, give better information to support. So I do not believe that AI in our industry is principally a cost saving measure. It's an opportunity to develop better service. And if you have better service, you're going to have better growth and better revenues.
Well, we're still paying attention to it. And sustainable aviation fuels is our pathway. It's hard. It's expensive. There's not a lot of technology that's being deployed. We're continuing to invest in it. We need all stakeholders around the table. We need government. We need customers. We need the energy companies to participate. I'm impressed. We're seeing improvements there, but it's been very slow.
And I think the biggest thing that people miss is not just the sustainable fuels, it's the better engine technologies. It's about being able to forecast the skies, the turbulence and whatnot so that we can provide safer, more reliable, actually cleaner service through the air using technology. They're looking at new forms of transportation. And JetZero is a company that we've been involved with. Where they have the opportunity to reduce air fuel emissions by 50%. And I think over the next decade you will see planes flying with such a significant amount less amount of fuel being utilized. Those are the moonshots. So sustainable aviation fuel is going to take a long time. That's the groundwork. But actually the opportunities are the sky and the opportunities with leadership.
