Ranks High in Maintenance, Service, Passenger Loyalty : Delta Known as One of the Best Airlines

NEW YORK — In 1929, Delta Air Lines made its first passenger flight--a 90-m.p.h. trip between Jackson, Miss., and Dallas, Tex. On Wednesday, the Delta plane that crashed with the loss of 13 lives had just completed the same route.

Another coincidence is that Delta’s last fatal accident also occurred at the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport, three years ago.

But Delta has one of the airline industry’s best reputations for maintenance, and it possesses the nation’s most modern fleet of airliners.

Began as Crop Duster

Airline observers say that Delta, which started out in 1925 as the nation’s first aerial crop-dusting service, is the financially strongest U.S. airline and has one of the best reputations for service and one of the best labor relations records in an industry plagued by worker unrest.

The airline, which is known for the esprit de corps of its employees and likes to refer to them as a family, received a Boeing 767 airliner as a gift from its workers when Delta’s fortunes dipped temporarily in 1982. Its merger with Western Airlines of Los Angeles last year was accomplished with fewer problems than any of the other post-deregulation consolidations. And its passengers are among the industry’s most loyal.

Even though Delta was one of the most vocal opponents of airline deregulation when Congress was considering the move during the 1970s, it has done at least as well as any of its competitors in the deregulated environment that began in 1978.

“It is hard to say anything bad about Delta,” Paul Karos, airline analyst with First Boston Corp., a New York investment firm, said Wednesday.

Pays High Dividend

“They have been consistently profitable. They pay the highest dividend in the industry. They have a high-quality service product, neck-and-neck with American Airlines. They have the lowest debt of any carrier. They have probably the most motivated work force of all of the mega-carriers.”

Before Delta acquired Western but when it was clear that Western was a takeover candidate, it was known that Western’s employees favored a merger with Delta over any other carrier.

But there is another side to the coin.

Last year, Delta, which is headquartered in Atlanta, was plagued by a series of highly publicized and embarrassing errors by its flight crews. The incidents included the landing of one plane on the wrong runway and of another at a wrong airport, some near collisions and dangerous engine shutdowns.

Butt of Editorial Cartoons

The string of gaffes propelled Delta uncomfortably onto the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. It became the butt of editorial cartoons and jokes on television shows.

It was a position Delta was not used to and one that it has done its utmost to escape.

‘Our Record Is Superb’

When asked about the series of mishaps, Delta spokesman Bill Berry in Atlanta said:

“I think that depends on how you interpret a mishap . . . . Our record is superb. Our overall reputation with the (Federal Aviation Administration) is superb as an airline that has a very detailed maintenance program and safety program. We did commit a number of spectacular incidents last summer, and this is what everybody continues to remember.”

But, he emphasized: “We did not harm a single individual last year. Our record is superb.”

Since Delta’s last accident involving fatalities on Aug. 2, 1985, at the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport, he said, the company has flown 119.3 billion passengers miles without any loss of life.

The airline is one of world aviation’s giants:

It has a fleet of 385 jets, with an additional 55 on order and with options to buy 84 more.

It has 2,200 flight departures over its system daily.

It employs 54,000 people, the fourth-largest airline work force in the world.

It boarded 56,958,000 passengers in 1987, second in the world only to the Soviet Union’s state-owned carrier, Aeroflot.

It had operating revenues of $6.09 billion last year, third highest in the world, and its operating profit of $434 million was second.

Delta until recently had a reputation as a highly conservative carrier. It never initiated fare increases and waited for others to make the first moves. It was slow in getting into the computer reservations business and still lags behind its competitors in that area.

Started Triple Mileage

But it has recently become more aggressive. It was Delta that introduced triple mileage bonuses for its frequent fliers early this year. It was a move that the other carriers decried but had to follow and one that increased the bonus liabilities of the carriers to what some analysts have called dangerous levels.

Delta has been so intent on satisfying its customers that it sometimes allows an airliner to depart late rather than make connecting passengers miss the flight. And that, said Paul Turk, an officer of Avmark Inc., an aviation consulting firm in Arlington, Va., “greatly cuts down their complaint rate.”

Delta has consistently been praised for employing the latest technology and especially for keeping its fleet up to date. According to Turk, the average age of Delta’s planes is 9.28 years, the lowest in the industry.