Delta Air Lines

Delta Air Lines was founded in 1924 as Huff Daland Dusters in Macon, Georgia — initially as the world's first commercial crop-dusting operation. The company was purchased in 1928 by a group of investors led by C.E. Woolman and renamed Delta Air Service after the Mississippi Delta region it primarily served. Delta carried its first passenger in 1929 on a route between Dallas, Texas and Jackson, Mississippi.

Through the 1930s and 1940s Delta gradually expanded its network across the southeastern United States. The airline reincorporated as Delta Air Lines Inc. in 1945 and began its transformation into a national carrier. The 1950s saw Delta introduce jet service with the Douglas DC-8 and later expand to the northeast US corridor.

A defining moment came in 1972 when Delta merged with Northeast Airlines, dramatically expanding its northeastern US network. Delta pioneered the hub-and-spoke routing model in the early 1980s, making Atlanta one of the world's dominant aviation hubs. The 1991 acquisition of Pan Am's transatlantic routes gave Delta its first significant international footprint. Delta filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September 2005 following financial pressures from fuel costs and post-9/11 industry disruption, emerging successfully in April 2007.

In October 2008, Delta completed a transformative merger with Northwest Airlines — then the largest airline merger in history — creating the world's largest carrier at that time. Under the leadership of CEO Ed Bastian since 2016, Delta has consistently been ranked the most admired airline in North America and has earned a reputation for operational excellence, generating record profits in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic.