What’s nearly 100 years old, gets up and running before dawn each morning and works 365 days a year?
That would be Delta Air Lines.
Delta, Atlanta’s hometown carrier, will celebrate its centennial next year and has already started preparing to mark the milestone. The celebration will stretch throughout 2025, when Delta will become the first U.S. airline to reach the century mark.
In preparation, the Delta Flight Museum on the company’s headquarters campus near Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport will temporarily close its museum hangars Dec. 16 to install “new exhibits, new stories from the past and a new museum experience overall,” according to the museum’s website.
In the meantime, the Boeing 747 plane exhibit in the parking lot will remain open for visits and events, along with the museum store. That means those who may have hoped to visit the museum over upcoming holiday break will not be able to see the main hangars of the museum.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
The full museum will reopen in March, when it will celebrate the founding of Delta as Huff Daland Dusters in Macon in 1925. The birthday will be marked with a gala, followed by the reopening of the museum.
Huff Daland Dusters treated Georgia peach and pecan orchards and cotton fields for pests.
Within months, C.E. Woolman joined Huff Daland Dusters as chief entomologist, on a leave of absence from Louisiana State University’s Agriculture Extension Department, and the company moved from Macon to Monroe, Louisiana, to seek more work.
A few years later, Huff Daland Dusters evolved into an airline carrying passengers. That led to the formation in 1928 of Delta Air Service, which bought the assets of Huff Daland Dusters. The company was named for the Mississippi Delta region where it operated.
By 1941, Delta Air Service moved its headquarters to Atlanta, and by 1945 it is renamed Delta Air Lines. Woolman became known as a legendary founder of Delta, continuing on with the company and becoming president in 1945 and CEO in 1965. He died in 1966.
At the museum, curators have been planning exhibits for the centennial, scanning archival images and preparing artifacts for display.
Recent visitors to the museum may have noticed there was already some work underway inside the hangars, including paint, carpet and electrical work, to prepare for the construction.
“This is a major milestone project,” the museum said in a blog post on its website.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Delta has already been nodding toward its upcoming 100th birthday at events and in comments and framing it as a way to “embark on our next century of flying.” The airline told its SkyMiles frequent flyer program members that they can “expect even more ways to access experiences through Delta’s centennial year in 2025.”
Also next year, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport will be celebrating its centennial, 100 years from the signing of the legislation that created the airport. The airport’s celebration will start in January, Hartsfield-Jackson’s interim general manager, Jan Lennon, said during remarks at a recent Atlanta City Council Transportation Committee meeting.
“This is exciting. Delta will be celebrating their 100th year. So there’s going to be a lot going on,” Lennon said.
A timeline of Delta’s history
- 1924: The Huff Daland Dusters crop-dusting operation is founded in Macon and moves to Monroe, Louisiana, the next year.
- 1928: C.E. Woolman, the principal founder of Delta Air Lines, buys Huff Daland Dusters and renames it Delta Air Service.
- 1929: The company, now called Delta Air Service, launches scheduled flights.
- 1941: Delta headquarters moves from Monroe, Louisiana, to Atlanta.
- 1945: Official corporate name becomes Delta Air Lines Inc.
- 1953: Chicago and Southern Air Lines merger gives Delta its first international routes.
- 1961: Delta flies first nonstop flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles.
- 1972: Northeast Airlines merges with Delta.
- 1987: Delta Air Lines absorbs Western Air Lines, making it the nation’s fourth-largest carrier.
- 1991: Delta purchases substantially all of Pan Am’s trans-Atlantic routes and the Pan Am Shuttle, making Delta a global carrier.
- 1999: Delta acquires Comair.
- 2008: Delta announces merger deal with Northwest Airlines.
- 2012: Delta buys an oil refinery in Trainer, Pennsylvania, to produce jet fuel and other fuel
- 2016: Ed Bastian becomes Delta’s 9th CEO, succeeding Richard Anderson.
- 2020: The COVID-19 pandemic causes airlines to slash flights globally, including Delta, which also cuts tens of thousands of people from its workforce through unpaid leaves, buyouts and early retirements. It takes years for the industry to recover.
- 2025: Delta will celebrate its centennial anniversary.
Source: Delta, AJC research
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