Delta and Northwest

ex-fa

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7347731.stm
Page last updated at 07:24 GMT, Tuesday, 15 April 2008 08:24 UK

US merger forms 'largest airline'

Delta CEO Richard Anderson on the merger deal

Rival US companies Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines have agreed to merge in a $5bn (Ј2.5bn) deal that will create the world's biggest carrier.

The new airline, to be called Delta, will have annual revenue of more than $35bn and employ about 75,000 staff.

Analysts say the deal could prompt similar moves by other US airlines struggling with rising oil prices.

But the deal, sealed a year after both carriers exited bankruptcy protection, could face resistance from unions.

Pilots for Northwest and the union acting on behalf of most of the carrier's ground workers said they would oppose the merger.

Airlines worldwide are suffering in the wake of a consumer slowdown in the US and Europe, making it harder to raise ticket prices to offset rising fuel-prices.

"Merging Delta and Northwest is the most effective way to offset higher fuel prices and improve efficiencies, increase international presence and fund long-term investment in the business," said Delta chief executive Richard Anderson, who is also to lead the new airline.

'Pro-merger'

The merger agreed on Monday night will see Northwest shareholders receiving 1.25 Delta shares for each of their Northwest shares.

The combined company will be based in Atlanta.

An unspecified number of job cuts are expected to reduce overlap in corporate and administrative departments, Delta said.

Before the merger, Delta had said it would eliminate 2,000 jobs this year.

The deal still requires approval from competition authorities but it is not expected to face hurdles on that front.

"This administration has taken a very pro-merger stance," said Diana Moss, an economist at the American Antitrust Institute.


More on this:
 
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http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyin...the-first-sign-of-the-delta-northwest-merger/
Delta Airlines 747-400 Takes To The Sky : The First Sign Of The Delta - Northwest Merger
12.17.2008 | Author: flyingfish | Posted in Uncategorized

Web: www.thetravelstrategist.com — E-Mail: [email protected]

17/12/2008 – Delta Airlines 747-400 Takes To The Sky : The First Sign Of The Delta - Northwest Merger

Anyone who follows business, global business, the airline industry, or who simply flies somewhat often, has most certainly heard of the Delta Airlines merger with Northwest Airlines. The combination of these two airlines, which will retain the Delta name, is creating the world’s largest airline.

Mergers of airlines are a long process. Integrating crews, reservations systems, fleets, etc, can be a long complex process. In an effort to speed up the visual presence of the Delta/Northwest merger, the combined airline unveiled the first Northwest Airlines Boeing 747-400 to be repainted in the Delta Airlines colours.

The ‘new’ Delta 747-400 rolled out of the hanger on the 12th of December in Victorville, CA (VCV). A day after the aircraft rolled out, the 747-400 (#6305) taxied out to Runway 17/35, lined up and used its new FAA radio call sign for the first time. The aircraft was no longer “Northwest Flight 9868,” it was now “Northwest in Delta Colours Flight #9868.”

At 2:52pm PST, on the 13th of December, the first Delta Airlines 747 went wheels up for the first time in 32 year. A few hours later, at 11:03pm EST “Northwest in Delta Colours Flight #9868″ landed safely at Detroit Metro Airport (DTW)

So for the doubters who have been secretly (and publicly) hoping the merger would somehow be split up, even after it was approved, and stock was transferred between the airlines, here is your wake up call that the merge is fully underway.

From now on, into the foreseeable future, as aircraft are repainted, the call sign ‘Northwest’ will become ‘Northwest in Delta Colours.’

Below are some images of the new Delta 747-400 paint scheme. Photos are courtesy of Delta Airlines.


nwa_dl_744_2.jpg


nwa_dl_744_1.jpg


747-400 in Delta Colors

dlta_airlines' photostream : http://www.flickr.com/photos/delta_airlines/
 
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merry passenger,
Pax,

Gentlemen,

I encourage you to check out some Delta’s B747 pictures from 70-s on airliners.net, and also video clips on youtube.com ;)
 
From Delta blog:
http://blog.delta.com/2009/02/05/deltas-first-747s/
Delta’s First 747s
February 5th, 2009 by Marie Force in History, Planes

With all the recent buzz over our 747-400s in Delta colors, did you know Delta first flew 747s in 1970-1977? You may not, because we only operated five 747-100s. They were a little too big–seating 370 people–for our route capacity when we flew international mainly to the Caribbean and Canada. If you had a chance to work or travel in them though, you probably have some great stories about the experience.

The scene at the Atlanta airport only minutes after Delta’s first 747 arrived on October 2, 1970.

Delta turned the upper-deck area above the first class cabin into the “world’s first flying penthouse.” It could be sold as a unit to a group traveling together.
 
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=11000004BNDO&nl=2&full_skip=1
Delta No Longer Sending Reservation Calls to India
By Harry R. Weber
April 20, 2009 8:03AM

Delta Air Lines Inc. no longer is outsourcing reservation calls to India after years of complaints from customers who preferred to speak to someone in the United States.

Chief Executive Richard Anderson told employees in a recorded message late Thursday night that the world's biggest airline operator is in the process of bringing all customer calls back in-house in the U.S.

Customer calls were no longer forwarded to India as of the first quarter of this year, Anderson said. Foreign call centers remain in Jamaica and South Africa, though Anderson indicated that staffing at those locations likely will be reduced in the future as the global financial crisis cuts call volume.

"The customer acceptance of call centers in foreign countries is low, and our customers are not shy about letting us have that feedback," Anderson said.

Difficulty understanding the call center agents in India was a concern among some customers over the years.

Atlanta-based Delta said in 2002 that it would send some reservations work to India to save money. In 2004, amid an earlier bout with hard financial times, Delta shuttered one of its three call centers in India.

At the time, Delta said outsourcing some call center functions had saved Delta about $25 million a year.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, UAL Corp.'s United Airlines outsourced some reservation calls to India. In 2007, Hawaiian Airlines outsourced most of its reservation call center to the Philippines.

A United spokeswoman said Friday that some of the call center work the airline was outsourcing to India has been brought back to the U.S., though some reservation calls are still forwarded there. United also has call center operations in Chicago, Detroit and Hawaii, she said.
 
For those interested direct from Delta Flight Ops:

Here is the update on repainted aircraft (into new Delta livery) as of today:
747-400 5
A330-300 12
757-200 9
757-300 1
A320 8
A319 2
DC9-50 14



Also on the on board WiFi:

Wi-fi Reliability and Passenger Feedback

Wi-Fi has been installed on over 40% of Delta’s domestic fleet (130 of 323 aircraft) and the system has proven extremely reliable, exceeding 99% of all flights. Initially we did experience some reliability issues which we attributed to incorrect procedures. Unlike the IFE system which has a different power down and reset procedures, the Wi-Fi system installed on board does not typically need to be powered off to reset or shut down after the last flight of the day. This was happening during the first few months and creating very long boot-up times and other errors. We’ve installed a placard advising that the power should remain on, and a heavy switch cover in the cabin that has reduced the power off events to nearly zero. Additionally, Aircell is able to monitor each flight in real-time and have
technicians meet aircraft that same day to correct any issues.

The system installed (as of today) on MD-88 - 115 A/C, MD-90 - 1 A/C, B757 - 14 A/C
 
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Delta has all domestic fleet equiped with the on-board internet. That is the largest internet fleet in the World.
Good job, guys!
 
May be it is a wrong perception but it seems that the merged fleet of Delta is too large and contains a lot of old-fashioned aircraft like MD-80, B-767 and B-747. Recently the company has grounded a number of 757s and 767s and nearly doubled the sixe of 777s fleet. The next step will probably be the phase-out of MD-80 as the use of 20+ aged aircraft doesn't correspondes good with the stance of the world's largest air company.
 
Recently the company has grounded a number of 757s and 767s and nearly doubled the sixe of 777s fleet. The next step will probably be the phase-out of MD-80 as the use of 20+ aged aircraft doesn't correspondes good with the stance of the world's largest air company.

I don't think it makes any difference if a certain airline is the largest or the smallest in the World. The only important thing is if the airline is safe. There are number of examples of cool airlines crashing brand new airplanes. :)

Delta carries 180 million people every year and in 20 years Delta pilots didn't bend any metal. That's pretty good, comparing to the rest of the world.

Patriot will hopefully comment with some numbers, but the operation hardly is reflected upon by the age of the aircraft. If the airplanes are flown and maintained properly by trained personel they will work much longer than 20 years.

Delta doesn't have any MD80's. They have MD88 and 90's. I think their oldest MD88 is only at a third of it's validity limit. They can safely fly for a long-long time to come. And they are payed for. It makes much more sence to fly the aircraft you own, then get a new one on the morgage of 50-180M.

They did park some 757 and 767 .. not because they are old, but because of the fall of loads. Those aircraft will be back on line this spring.
 
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PS
Just talked to Patriot - he said that dispatch relilability of their MD88's is higher than A320. If you add morgage on the A320 and savings on gas you still spend more running their fleet that the 88's.
Why pay more for airplanes that are less relilable?

For now..
 
http://airlineworld.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/northwest-airlines-rip/
R.I.P. Northwest Airlines
Published February 6, 2010

Nearly two years after Delta and Northwest Airlines announced their merger the Northwest Airlines (also known as NWA) brand has totally disappeared. From the first of February 2010, there are no more Northwest airport locations, check-in desks, no NW flight numbers, not even a website.

Delta and Northwest announced their plans for merger in the middle of April, 2008, that also included the declaration that the Delta brand will be kept. We all knew this was coming, but it’s still hard to believe that such a well-known, traditional airline brand is now completely history.

Established in 1926 as Northwest Airways, it started flying mail for the US Post Office. One year later it was also transporting passengers and went international with its first route to Winnipeg, Canada in 1928.

In 1931, Northwest sponsored Charles and Anne Lindbergh on a pioneering flight to Japan, scouting what would become known as the Northwest Airlines Great Circle route, and proving that flying via Alaska could save as much as 2,000 miles (3,000 km) on a New York City-Tokyo route. In 1933, Northwest was designated to fly the Northern Transcontinental Route from New York City to Seattle, Washington, adopting the name of Northwest Airlines one year later. In 1947 it became the first airline to operate a commercial passenger flight from the USA (Minneapolis) to Japan (Tokyo) onboard a Douglas DC-4, flying through Edmonton (Canada), Anchorage (Alaska) and Shemya in the Aleutian Islands. The flight actually continued from Tokyo to Shanghai (China) and to Manila (Philippines). Soon followed by flights to Seoul (Korea) and Taipei, Taiwan in 1950. At this time the airline was re-branded as “Northwest Orient Airlines“.

In 1951, Northwest was involved in the foundation of Japan Airlines (JAL) by leasing airplanes and crew to the newly formed Japanese flag carrier. From 1952 Northwest was granted a right to operate flights out of Tokyo to other Asian destinations (12 at some point in time), and soon it became the largest non-Japanese carrier at Tokyo. It remains very active on these routes out of Japan even until today. Northwest started using the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet in 1970.

After merging with Republic Airlines in 1986 and dropping the word “Orient” from its name, in 1993 Northwest launched one of the biggest airline partnerships ever, with Dutch KLM. When KLM merged with Air France, it meant that both KLM and Northwest joined the SkyTeam alliance.

In 2005, Northwest was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection – becoming the 4th of the top 6 US carriers to kick off a reorganization process that year being protected. Northwest emerged from bankruptcy protection 20 months later, in May, 2007. Then, it took less than a year to announce the merger with Delta Airlines in April 2008 to form the World’s Largest Airline, to be named Delta Air Lines.

During 2009 the Northwest brand started to fade away with airport counters merging with Delta, as well as many aircraft getting repainted in the Delta scheme – which also meant new Airbus types carrying the Delta logo for the first time ever (for example the Airbus A330 as seen below). October 2009 saw the operational center being moved to Atlanta, GA from its long-time main hub in Minneapolis/St.Paul, MN. Other hubs developed over the years in Detroit, Memphis, Amsterdam and Tokyo-Narita are now fully taken over by Delta.

After operating as a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines for more than a year with 303 aircraft, Northwest Airlines as a company ceased to exist officially on December 31, 2009. One month later, on January 31, 2010, Delta completed the merge of the reservation systems, redirected www.nwa.com over to www.delta.com and discontinued using the Northwest name for flights. The official last Northwest flight was NW2470 from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. The actual last Northwest departure was actually a chartered Airbus A319 flying as NW 9946, a flight between Washington-Dulles and Minneapolis, departed at 12:54 AM EST on January 31st. Maybe reflecting on the nearly quarter of a century partnership with KLM, the last flight to land was NW 248, a flight from Detroit to Amsterdam, landing at 5:33 AM EST.

Its headquarters building in Eagan, Minnesota that once housed approximately 1000 employees is currently up for sale. Some airplanes are still flying in nwa livery – but only until they get their new paint-job as part of periodical maintenance…

R.I.P. Northwest Airlines
Flew for 83 years and 3 months (1926-2009)

by balint01
 
"RIP" - I think is a little exaggeration. Nothing unheard off. Airlines merge and fall apart all the time. Nostalgic feelings for past employer's names is backwards mentality. We just move on in the future! :)
If the author of this article saw genealogical tree of new Delta he'd feel the same way.

ExNWA pilots took 20-30% pay increase and a better contract overall - what's not to like!! :)
 
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Delta Air Lines faces new union drive
Ground workers and flight attendants face heated decision in wake of Northwest merger
By Julie Forster
[email protected]
Updated: 08/05/2010 10:10:18 PM CDT


At Delta Air Lines, the fight is on.

Union ground workers at the carrier are accusing Delta officials of interfering in organizing efforts ahead of anticipated elections that will determine if 50,000 ground workers and flight attendants will be represented by unions.

Delta says it's merely exercising its rights in the high-stakes campaign, which comes after the largely nonunion carrier acquired smaller and mostly unionized Northwest Airlines in 2008.

The National Mediation Board is expected to set dates for elections soon, but campaigning already is well under way.

The International Association of Machinists, which represents about 10,000 former Northwest ground workers, and the Association of Flight Attendants, which covers 6,000 former Northwest flight attendants, are trying to woo non-union Delta counterparts, which include 20,000 ground workers and 14,000 flight attendants in all-or-nothing elections.

Pro-union baggage handlers and other ground workers who work for the carrier at MinneapolisSt. Paul International Airport conducted an informational picket Thursday afternoon. They called on the company to stop what they see as unfair influencing of workers against a union.

They say that the company is misleading employees in an effort to influence them to vote "no" in the upcoming elections, and contend Delta has not allowed employees to hear the pro-union pitches while at the same time pressuring them to listen to anti-union views.

Delta points to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that an employer is free to state its views on unions and said the law does not require that an employer be neutral on unions. Employers also are free to state even their specific views about a particular union, as long as the communication does not contain promises or threats to influence how employees vote.
"We respect our employees' right to decide if representation is right for them, but we believe that Delta's track record of treating people well, of having a direct relationship, is what's best for our employees and our company," said Gina Laughlin, a Delta spokeswoman.

The carrier has not been shy about addressing the union issue. Earlier this year, Delta CEO Richard Anderson said in a recorded message to employees that the Atlanta-based airline had received complaints from workers who said they had been harassed by union organizers. He told workers to call police if they felt threatened. Union officials have denied the harassment allegations.

In addition to the Twin Cities, union organizers picketed Delta hubs in Detroit and Memphis, Tenn., on Thursday.

At the Twin Cities airport Thursday, Deb Gentry, a 16-year baggage handler with Northwest and a union member, was one of those protesting what she sees as unfair interference from the airline. She held a mailing Delta sent out to ground workers that points out that to make your vote count in the upcoming election, you must cast a ballot. And if you don't want to be represented by the IAM, you should cast a "no" vote.

"They're supposed to remain completely neutral," she said of the flier. "This is not remaining neutral."

"We just want Delta to leave it alone, follow the law and stop interfering in the election."

Said Jerry Kappa, another baggage handler, "Let the employees decide without the company's coercion."

Kip Hedges, a baggage handler who has worked for Northwest for 22 years, said he was out picketing because he wants to send a message: "We want to bring attention to the fact that Delta is not being fair in terms of our representation election."

Julie Forster can be reached at 651-228-5189.
 
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