DELTA AIRLINE SAFETY RECORD

Delta airline safety record

Delta airline safety record

See attached ppt

Delta Air Lines' long history of service actually began in agriculture, when the company was founded in 1924 as the world's first aerial crop dusting organization -- Huff Deland Dusters. In fact, if the boll weevil had not marched out of Mexico prior to the turn of this century to devastate the cotton fields of the South, there might not have been a Delta Air Lines. When the weevil's relentless destruction reached the Mississippi Valley, such a serious economic threat faced the South that the Bureau of Entomology operated a laboratory in Tallulah, Louisiana, as the base for an intensified cotton insect investigation. Directing the activities at the laboratory was Dr. B. R. Extension Department of Coda, assisted by a young district agent with the Louisiana State University, C. E. Wolman. Wolman, an agricultural engineering graduate of the University of Illinois, was also an aviation enthusiast. Since the airplane was little more than a novelty with an uncertain future then, Wolman settled for the more certain future of agriculture. By 1916, Dr. Coda and Wolman had their first promising weapon -- lead arsenate, a dry powder. What was needed was a method of application that would be faster and more effective than hand sprinkling. Application by air seemed most practical, and Dr. Coda obtained a small appropriation from Congress to pursue this experiment. For more long years, Coda's entomologists and Wolman worked with two Army-furnished Jennies, experimenting and perfecting dusting procedures(Norwood, 2002).

On May 30, 1925, Wolman left the Agriculture Extension Service to take charge of Huff Deland's entomological work as vice president and field manager. To the company he brought a genial personality, integrity and a stubborn resistance to failure -- traits which have endured at Delta. The parent company, Huff Deland Manufacturing in New York, built the first planes

Ever specifically designed for dusting, and Huff Deland Dusters' fleet became the largest privately-owned aircraft fleet in the world with 18 planes. The number soon grew to 25 small planes and some larger planes, called Ton of Dust.

Since the dusting company had an income only during summer months, Wolman decided to shift operations during non-productive months to Peru where seasons are reversed. It was in Peru that Wolman first visualized the future of passenger service by air, and he successfully secured South American airmail rights over stiff competition to become the first American airline operator south of the equator in the western hemisphere. Service from Peru to Ecuador, a 1,500-mile route, was inaugurated in 1927.

Returning to Monroe in 1928, Wolman found the parent company, Huff Deland Manufacturing, attempting to sell the dusting division. He quickly aroused the interest of Monroe businessmen who purchased Huff Deland's equipment. The company's name was changed to Delta Air Service (Delta for the Mississippi Delta), with D.Y. Smith as the first president and Wolman retaining his title of vice president and general manager. Back in Peru, a revolution was erupting, and as the few planes and ...