At its December 18 opening price of $53 per share,Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) is selling at just 10.3 times earnings. It has a dividend now yielding 2.6%, which makes Delta stock super attractive even as a recession looms.

Experts now are predicting a huge bear market and, very likely, a recession in 2019, it may be time to go bargain-hunting.

Jeffrey Gundlach and Stanley Druckenmuller have joined the parade of voices pronouncing doom in 2019, and they might be right. But they’re leaving some huge bargains behind, in places like the airline stocks. So, take Delta stock.

In last year’s market, it would have been poised for takeoff. The government estimates 46 million people will be flying around this Christmas, and fuel prices are plunging.

Earnings, Airline Hatred and Delta Stock

Delta earned $1.80 per share during the third quarter, but analysts are expecting just $1.27 per share for the current quarter. The balance sheet looks clean, $7.8 billion in debt on $55 billion in assets, and if the company hits $7 billion in operating cash flow for the year, as it should, a $36 billion market cap looks dirt cheap.

Delta isn’t even the cheapest big, profitable airline on the board. Southwest Airlines (NYSE:LUV) was available on Dec. 18 at a PE of 7.8, even though it could pay off all its long-term debt with cash and short-term investments on hand as of September.

JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ:JBLU) is selling for a PE of 7.5, despite less than $1 billion of long-term debt on almost $10 billion of assets.

The Bear Case and Delta Stock

When the economy sours, airline stocks crash and burn. Airlines are often so keen on competing with one another that they can run themselves into the ground. The bankruptcies of the last decade, including that of Delta, remain fresh in the memory. Jet fuel prices are volatile, wage pressures are constant, and accidents happen.

But assuming the past will repeat itself is often a bad investment strategy. Many of Southwest’s innovations, like its quick turnarounds and short routes, have been copied by the rest of the industry.

Competition has been reduced, as airlines settle into a comfortable oligopoly where they dominate major hubs like Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and Denver, then follow one another in hiking prices on better seats, baggage fees, and other amenities.

North America is now the most profitable area of the $824 billion global airline business. Profits are heavily dependent on jet fuel prices, but these are down 11% over the last month and are now down for the year.

So far in 2018 there has been only one fatality in a U.S. commercial airplane, an engine failure on a Southwest flight in April that left one dead. Before that you have to go back nine years for a catastrophic crash by an American airliner, on a regional carrier that’s now defunct.

The Bottom Line on Delta Stock

Airline travel is safer and more profitable than it has ever been, but as with the auto industry, its stocks still sell at single-digit price to earnings ratios.

Delta, and other airlines, usually meet earnings estimates, and could easily fly past them this quarter, based on load factors, low fuel prices, and increasing “nuisance fees.”

The lessons of the past seem to be in the past, but today’s investors have yet to catch on. While Delta is still a volatile stock, down 13% over the last month, its gains have nearly doubled those of the Dow over the last five years. Analysts are bullish despite expecting a down revenue quarter.

That’s what I call a good set-up.

Dana Blankenhorn is a financial and technology journalist. He is the author of a new mystery thriller, The Reluctant Detective Finds Her Family, available now at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at danablankenhorn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @danablankenhorn. As of this writing he owned no shares in companies mentioned in this article.