Merger lets Delta add 500 jobs to Atlanta

Delta Air Lines is adding as many as 500 jobs in Atlanta as a result of its merger with Northwest Airlines, even as it cuts thousands of positions throughout its system through buyouts.

The additional jobs include employees moving from Northwest’s Minnesota headquarters and new hires, Delta executives said.

Delta is hiring about 60 “MBA-types” with specialties in finance, economics, math and operations research to work in pricing, said Delta chief executive Richard Anderson. The company is moving Northwest’s pricing operation to Atlanta, but some of those employees have elected not to move while other employees here have taken buyouts.

“We have a big recruiting effort underway,” Anderson said. “We’re getting amazing resumes both locally and from around the United States.”

Delta is also expanding its operations control center in Atlanta, with flight dispatchers and other staffers coming from Minneapolis.

“These are all people that are going to be down here buying houses,” Anderson said Wednesday in a meeting with editors of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

A Delta spokesman said the net effect on Delta’s local employment is hard to pin down because of all the coming and going. The airline says it has about 25,000 employees in Georgia, with most of them in Atlanta.

The moves by ex-Northwest employees to Atlanta will step up as the school year ends, and Anderson said many are settling in areas south of the airport such as Peachtree City.

Among the draws are a relatively easy commute and Fayette County’s well-regarded school system. Anderson — who himself moved from Minneapolis to take the top job at Delta in 2007 — said some ex-Northwest workers will look for private schools for their children. He said improving education is an area Atlanta should focus on to improve its appeal.

“I think the high school graduation rates and the quality of the graduates that we have coming out of the schools in Georgia needs to be a lot higher,” Anderson said.

Anderson praised Minnesota’s education system, adding that public schools around the Twin Cities “are like the private schools here.”

Meanwhile, more than 2,500 employees are taking buyouts Delta offered in January. Most leave after the summer.

Delta said before closing the Northwest merger that the deal would mean a loss of about 1,000 jobs as it combines administrative functions. Some jobs have already been cut at Northwest’s headquarters, and executives from both Delta and Northwest have left the company.

Ed Bastian, Delta’s president and No. 2 executive, said Delta hopes to avoid layoffs of operations employees because of the economy.