Delta Air Lines to Assure Environmental Compliance - Research Paper Example

Delta Air Lines is a founding member of a global airline alliance known as SkyTeam, which provides extensive worldwide flights, destinations, and services to customers (OZLER, 2005). Every week, the company offers more than six hundred flights to about sixty destinations in the Caribbean and Latin America. It is the second largest airline in the world after American Air Lines and has its Headquarters in Atlanta. Being a leading company in the airline industry, Delta Air Lines specializes in international and domestic flights.

Its regional jet operators including SkyWest, ExpressJet Airlines, Comair, Chautauqua Airlines, Big Sky Airlines, Shuttle America, Freedom Airlines, Pinnacle Airlines, and Atlantic Southeast Airlines offer service as Delta Connection (delta.com, 2009). Historical BackgroundThe company was founded in 1924. It originally started as a crop dusting service and for 40 years, Collet Everman Woolman, a pilot, and an agricultural scientist headed it dominating its operations until he died in 1966. His major competitors were Juan Trippe at Pan Am, Howard Hughes at TWA and Eddie Rickenbacker at Eastern.

Woolman and an associate could sell their services to farmers by dropping calcium arsenate, a chemical that would kill boll weevils that were a threat to Louisiana farmers’ crops using a hopper for the chemical. This led to the establishment of Huff Daland Dusters, the first crop dusting service in the world. The crop dusting operation separated from its parent company in 1928 and it became Delta Air Service. Woolman’s crop dusting business spread across the south expanding to South America and Mexico.

The company then diversified through securing airmail contracts. In 1929, it launched passenger service in Mississippi between Jackson and Dallas. It later added routes to Charleston and Atlanta (Brown, 2000).