Long Term Debt Essay

Delta has a long and storied past in the airline industry. They started as “the first commercial agricultural flying company in the US” (27-2), and have been growing and expanding ever since. The airline industry is a challenging industry with a constantly changing landscape with limit growth prospects and many players that are all essentially the same (27-17). There are three areas of opportunity for Delta as they position themselves for the future; first Delta needs to address their long-term debt issues, second they need to become a customer service leader, and finally they need find a way to stabilize their fuel cost.
Long Term Debt
“Delta’s management admitted in the corporation’s 2011 annual report that “our substantial indebtedness may limit our financial and operating activities and may adversely affect our ability to incur additional debt to fund future needs””(27-10). Addressing this problem head on has to be Delta’s number one priority for the next few years. Delta can offset the problem of long term debt by increasing their operating income and using this either pay down on their debt or to fund new initiatives. In 2008 Delta started a merger with Northwest,

In an industry where it is difficult to expand and get new customers to use your services, a company has to go above and beyond to ensure that the customers they do have continue to come back. In the last several years Delta has failed to do this. “Delta had the worst record among large carriers for on time arrivals and accounted for a third of all customer complaints, the worst of any airline, for categories like service and lost bags” (27-3). The things travelers fear most are lost bags and delays, Delta has to fix these issues if they are going to regain the trust of