When Delta Air Lines announced its merger with Northwest Airlines, Delta's top executive said the deal was about "addition, not subtraction."
In the more than three years since, things have changed.
The airline's latest plans to shrink its footprint, including the move of flight training and maintenance work from Minneapolis to Atlanta announced this week, are part of broader cutbacks at major Delta operations around the country.
Amid high fuel prices and a wobbly economy, Delta is cutting flight capacity and trimming costs by selling off facilities it doesn’t fully use.
Some of the consolidation brings more work to Delta's Atlanta operations. Hundreds of jobs are being moved from Minneapolis, but it's unclear how many will move to Atlanta and whether there will be any new hires. At the same time, the airline is cutting its total workforce with buyouts and early retirement offers this month.
In Minneapolis, Delta has 20 flight simulator bays, in addition to 30 bays in Atlanta. "At the time of the merger we thought we could make it work," Delta chief executive Richard Anderson told employees in a message Friday. But Delta has only been using about 25 of the combined 50 bays for its own training.
The move of jobs has generated an outcry in the Twin Cities area. "Delta made a commitment to keep many of these jobs in Minnesota," said Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., in a written statement. He said Delta "is now backing away from that promise."
Anderson noted that the cuts are not limited to Minneapolis. The company is selling two buildings in Atlanta -- a vacant office building and a data center that will be leased back from the new owner. In Cincinnati and Memphis, Delta has been shrinking operations from three concourses to one. Delta has closed the Cincinnati headquarters building of its regional subsidiary Comair and consolidated its New York offices.
As it assumed bond debt from Northwest in 2008, Delta agreed to keep its "Delta North" headquarters in the Minneapolis area, along with at least 10,000 jobs and 400 flights a day. The company said this week it will still have more than 12,000 Delta employees there. Northwest had about 11,500. With the closure of the training center it will pay back roughly $170 million of outstanding debt to the commission that owns Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
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