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
Growing up in Denver, I remember feeling that Frontier was Colorado's airline. This was very much to do with the companies marketing strategy. The branding of the airline is "A whole different animal" and the company began painting pictures of wildlife on the vertical stabilizers of thier aircraft, each one unique. In some cases, they would promote new routes. For example, when the airline began flights to florida and the carribean, they painted a dolphin onto the tail. These commercials consisted mainly of dry, witty banter between the different animals as the aircraft sat at the terminal onloading passengers. It was certainly a break from the legacy airline pitches, which showed planes flying at sunset and were still glamorizing the luxury and comfort of travel. Frontier knew that its target market were people who lived in and around Denver who needed to get to surrounding, middle america, locations. Locations which were being more and more underserviced as time went on (the irony being that frontier has dropped the majority of its or...
In 1971 Southwest Airlines started their operations with a vision of being a low cost/low fare carrier for passengers traveling between San Antonio, Dallas and Houston. After early legal battles and struggles gaining market share, their fighting spirit, integrity and will to succeed paid off. Over the course of the next 40+ years, Southwest has become the world’s largest low-cost carrier, while carrying more domestic passengers that any other U.S. airline (“Southwest Corporate,” 2015). Their culture, values and operating practices are what have driven this company to its current success and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Challenged by an old, obsolete airport, the city of Denver decided on not only doing an expansion but ultimately building a fully dedicated facility in an entirely new location. Twice the size of Manhattan, the airport was to be the largest in the United States and was specially designed to handle concentrated hubbing traffic (Montealgre et al, 1996, p.4). The master plan encompassed a fast tracked build-design scheme that called for utmost operational efficiency which would consequently attract large airlines to choose DIA as their main Southwestern hub (Nice, n.d.). Dominance of the DIA would fuel an economic boom in Denver, but for this to take place—a fast passenger turnover would be required, leading to the perception that they had to implement an airport-wide automated baggage handling system in spite of the known risks. This critical piece of the airport wou...
Delta Air Lines operates in a competitive industry. Amongst its competitors, its two largest were American Airlines and United. To survive in the industry it was necessary to employ and maintain technologically efficient and cutting edge systems. However, Delta systems of operations were mainly paper based; they still used pneumatic tubes to move information and they made little use of the internet. As a result, the company lacked a competitive edge. The technology it had was based on various departments independently purchasing the technology they needed and hiring their own IT staff. In 1996, Delta was still known for its expensive airfares, poor service, limited leg room on flights and use of out-dated inefficient processing systems.
In today's competitive marketplace, all firms are seeking ways to improve their overall performance. One such method of improvement, recently adopted by many firms, is benchmarking. Benchmarking is a technique used to evaluate internal business processes. "In this analysis, managers determine the firm's critical processes and outputs, baseline those processes, then compare the performance of each process against a standard outside the industry" (Bounds, Yorks, Adams, & Ranney 1994). To effectively improve a business process to world-class quality, managers must find a firm that is recognized as a global leader, not just the industry standard. Successful benchmarking requires tailor-made solutions, not just blind copying of another organization. Measurement and interpretation of data collected is the key to creating business process solutions.
Many elements of Delta Airlines are described in detail, within this paper. There is a breakdown of the external and internal factors, using external and internal analysis. Porter’s Five forces are used to create the external analysis, and the key factors for Delta are power of buyers, and rivalry. Delta’s competitive advantages are identified as customer service, sustainability, brand image, strong strategic alliances, and corporate travel. Delta’s main issues are the low expansion in international markets, continuous changing of incentive program, and glitches within technology. Delta should expand more into the Chinese and African markets in order to gain market share within the airline industry.
In a high competitive world market and with the increasing rational buyers a company can only win by creating and delivering the best customer value than the others competitors do. To succeed, a company needs to use the concepts of value chain.
United Airlines is one of the largest airlines in the United States and worldwide. Also, it is ranked as the oldest commercial airline that was founded by Walter Varney. United Airlines started as an Air Mail Service and then extended its services to be an Air Carrier. In 1927, William Boeing started his own airline, Boeing Air Transport, and started buying any other air mail companies, which included the Varney’s Air Mail Company. After a while, Boeing started manufacturing aircraft and parts, which allowed him to extend his company to a bigger organization. Also, within Boeing’s company, he bought several airports to expand his organization. In 1929, Boeing’s company has changed its name to be United Aircraft and Transport Corp. (UATC).
Northwest Airlines is one of the pioneers in the airline transportation industry and is ranked at the fourth largest air carrier in the United States today. The success of the carrier depends on the quality and reliability of the service at a reasonable price. Close competitors force Northwest to innovate their services by increasing efficiency. This essay will try to examine different perspectives in the services needed to successfully complete the company’s objectives. The analysis will explain historical and financial perspectives that may give a better understanding of the current market trend of the organization.
The increase was dramatically since it was unexpected. In 1994, there was the most dramatic move when USAir allowed the express carriers to handle their flights and stations at the six major hubs in the East. The airline company took over the ground operations at Washington National and Tampa and Baltimore. It led to their employee growth up to more than 1700. There are also many changes that have occurred at their customer service locations, crew bases and maintenance bases. In the late 2000s, Piedmont experienced a rapid increase in growth. Many airlines in the same period were shrinking their workforce while Piedmont customer service is expanded to include multiple locations in Alaska and western United
Delta Airlines has been a vibrant company in the airline industry, with great success over the years. Delta airlines started as a crops dusting company to serving more than 572 destinations, in 65 countries on six continents (Allan, H., David. H. ,2012). Delta airline moved its headquarters from Monroe, Louisiana to the city of Atlanta, Georgia. The great management strategies have portrayed from time to time to be fruitful even in the verge of a recession. With these consistency in delivery of services, it is clear that the company is out to outdo its competitors and turn out to be the greatest airline in the world.
This was a sad day for everyone in both the immediate and extended “Delta family,” a day perhaps as sad in its own way as the death of Mr. Woolman almost 40 years before. The sadness mixes with fear by employees and retirees, their families, stockholders, customers, vendors, taxpayers, governments and all others among the tens of thousands impacted by the bankruptcy. Leadership decisions by Delta’s Board and CEO’s over a long period of years laid the foundation for Delta to be in a position where the factors would have a large enough impact to result in bankruptcy. By promoting Ron Allen to CEO, primarily because he had moved up the chairs in the company through Beeb’s efforts, the Board showed their lack of awareness of the need for a strategist to deal with the fundamental changes taking place in the airline industry. Then the Board brought in Leo Mullin and gave him free rein for 6 ½ years to turn a cash rich company into one in such poor shape financially that his successor had to turn to expensive sources of money to keep the company
In addition to e-commerce, the company still runs television ads, puts up billboards, and occasionally displays ads in magazine spreads. They have cut budget spending for these items because the company does not feel they are as popular and they are not reaching their main customer target (Newsroom, 2015). For instance, if a customer wants to read a magazine or a newspaper article, many times the customer is using their smartphone, tablet, or computer to view these types of sources. Delta has taken advantage of this new trend for their advertising techniques. According to Tnooz (2013), “85% of Delta Airlines flight check-in globally take place via “preferred channels”--- Facebook, mobile apps, Delta.com, and airport kiosks, or any venue that doesn’t involve standing in line at a counter.” As an example, to show what percentage of frequent fliers carry smart phones, figure 1 displays a pie chart to show the
The main threats to the industry over the next five years are the rise in price of oil, legislation, the TSA, and labor costs. Each of these threats effect the scheduled air transportation industry not only endangers Delta Airlines but the entire industry. As the price of labor increases for ground operations and pilots this creates a burden on the industry by causing them to spend more to satisfy their labor requirements. The price of fuel increasing leads to the price of fuel to increase, which not only affects a single airline but every airline. With each time that the crude oil price rises the prices associated with the costs of refining the jet fuel as well as transporting it. These costs are distributed to each airline as they use this resource to transport passengers. As new politicians are elected to Congress and new administrators take charge of the FAA new regulations regarding this industry. These regulations affect everything from mergers to the airspace that the airlines operate in as well as what hubs and airports each airline operates out of. These factors are not issues that the industry faces, the TSA, the Transportation Security Administration, creates an unnecessary burden for the passengers attempting to travel from one location to another. The TSA inspections required before a passenger is allowed to board their respective flights allows time for each passenger to become frustrated with the amount of time they have to allot for inspection as well as the invasion of their privacy.
Air travel has grown in the past decade. Travel grew strongly for both leisure and business purposes. India will have nearly 800 to 1000 airplanes by 2023, it was estimated by Airbus. In spite of growth between 30 to 50 per cent in Indian aviation industry, losses of approximately 2200 crore is estimated for the current year.