Delta has been keeping a secret for the past 20 years—and pilots really want you to ask about it

Delta Air Lines has a secretive trading card program, and its sudden popularity is delighting pilots.

“I would almost call it a viral cult phenomenon with these cards,” Captain Brian Ferguson told Fortune. “Out of nowhere, overnight, almost everybody's asking for cards, everybody wanted these.”

In a viral TikTok video posted in November with over 30 million views, a passenger documented the process of securing his first-ever Delta trading card, and viewers were shocked to learn of the shiny collector item’s existence.

“Just googled ‘Delta Airlines trading cards.’ Mind blown,” one user wrote in the comments. Another matched their surprise: “We’ve been worrying about airline points when the real game has been airline trading cards this whole time.”

The video sparked a social media craze, with a flood of fellow frequent fliers clamoring to ask flight attendants for the chance to knock on the cockpit’s door and secure their post-flight prize.

The popularity extends beyond TikTok. Reddit users of the r/delta community, which boasts over 138,000 Delta fans, have shared images and videos of their favorite illustrations, including a framed showcase brandishing 36 cards.

“I was nervous to pop [my] head in the cockpit but the pilot immediately invited me in and offered to take a photo!” a user gushed in a post with 2,000 upvotes.

The sudden intrigue shocked Delta pilots like Ferguson, who recently told Fortune that while he’s always had a stack of cards on hand in hopes a passenger might pop the top-secret question, the amount of requests he’s received in recent weeks has skyrocketed. He now routinely gives out up to 10 cards per flight.

Demand was so high that by the Christmas holiday rush, Delta was “ordering and having these printed as fast as they can,” he said.

A seasoned pilot and retired Navy reservist with over 30 years of experience and a brief stint on the set of Top Gun: Maverick, the 54-year-old is never without a card on hand, and keeps a personal stash at his home in case of emergencies.

Between flights out of Los Angeles International Airport, the longtime pilot revealed to Fortune how passengers can score a card and hinted at a top-secret addition coming soon.

In-flight connections 

While Gen Z and millennial TikTokers may just now be catching up to the trading card trend, the phenomenon is not new. Launched by a group of flight operations employees in 2003, Delta’s cards are exclusive to pilots and feature images of the aircraft they pilot, according to a spokesperson. Delta says it introduces new designs into circulation every five years, and the artwork is voted on by the Fortune 500 airline’s nearly