Airline Portfolio: Delta Air Lines Analysis

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Delta Air Lines began in the early 1920’s as a crop dusting operation, known as the Huff Daland crop dusting company, and was based out of Macon, Ga. This was the first agricultural flying company in existence at the time and grew into the world’s largest privately owned fleet of aircraft (18 planes) by the mid 1920’s. At the turn of the decade, co-founder C.E. Woolman lead a movement to purchase Huff Daland and re-branded the company as Delta Air Service, named after the Mississippi River Delta region the company would navigate. Throughout the 1930’s, the company operated various mail and passenger routes between Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, and even an international route to Peru. By the middle of the century, Delta had shifted headquarters to Atlanta, Ga., made large contributions to the war effort by converting aircraft for military training purposes, created a freight shipping service using Douglas DC-3 aircraft, and increased its fleet to 644 available seats utilizing the pressurized cabins of the Douglas DC-6 aircraft. Delta, during this time period, is noted to have also inspired the hub and spoke layout of airport terminals which connected people to other outgoing flights. Major changes came for the airline by the end of the 1950’s, with the arrival of the jet age. Delta launched service utilizing the jet powered Douglas DC-8 in 1959, this aircraft had a range of 2700 miles, cut flight times between major cities by 40%, and could fly twice as many passengers as the large piston powered aircraft of the time. The airline now offered flights all over the U.S. and it was at this time that the Delta logo was changed to the red, white, and blue widget that we know today (although today the logo is solid red in c... ... middle of paper ... ...ty Analysis and Facility Requirements Summary. Retrieved from http://www.atlanta-airport.com/Airport/MasterPlan/ATL-FacReqts-DRAFT-Summary-101113.pdf Hartsfield –Jackson Atlanta International Airport (n.d.). Case Study. Atlanta Metropolitan Aviation Capacity Study Phase II. Retrieved from http://www.atlanta-airport.com/docs/Airport/AMACSExecutiveSummary.pdf Federal Aviation Administration (n.d.). NextGen. NextGen Implementation Plan 2013. Retrieved from https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/implementation/ Delta Flight Partners (n.d.). Delta Code Share Partners. Delta website. Retrieved from http://www.delta.com/content/www/en_US/traveling-with-us/where-we-fly/flight-partners.html Delta Cargo (n.d.). Shipping Rates. Delta Cargo website. Retrieved from https://www.deltacargo.com/Portals/2/Documents/rateSheets/general/STD%20Tariff%202013-04-01.pdf

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