Latest news with #DeltaFlightMuseum
Forbes
2 days ago
- Forbes
Play Tennis, Fly A Delta Simulator Or Visit Champagne On Your Next Layover
Delta's refreshed Flight Museum A long layover doesn't have to mean interminable hours in an airport, rather it can be an opportunity to explore something new while on your way to somewhere else. There are several airports that offer really exciting experiences that can be done and dusted over the course of a long layover. Budget an hour or less for travel time to and from each experience and you can squeeze in a chance to fly a 737 Delta simulator, dine at one of the newest restaurants in Champagne or take a tennis lesson from a coach to the champions. Read on for the details: More than one flyer has been stranded with hours to kill at the world's busiest airport. Now, they can pop over (a short ten minute taxi ride) to the newly renovated and expanded Delta Flight Museum. It's an aviation geek's dream—but equally perfect for kids as well as fashionistas who will love the wall of flight attendant uniform styles. Guests can even book time in a Boeing 737-200 full motion flight simulator for a true thrill. Be sure to reserve simulator time in advance, it's a popular offering, and expect to pay $460 for a group of four or less people. Delta also just unveiled a swanky new lounge on Concourse D—It's a sprawling setup (the largest lounge in Atlanta) with panoramic airfield views, several buffet stations and plenty of places to cozy up with your laptop and get work done or dream about your next trip. Polychrome Restaurant at Champagne Taittinger in Reims Reims is a short one-hour train ride from the airport station (no stops) and can take travelers into Champagne's beating heart, the small city of Reims. Here you can visit the newly minted Polychrome Restaurant at Champagne Taittinger. The brand recently revamped the visitor experience so be sure to book a tour and visit of their beautiful ancient chalk caves before making a final stop at the city's Notre-Dame de Reims Cathedral to see the Marc Chagall stained glass mural. The train can get your back to CDG in time for your next flight. Tennis lovers need just 20 minutes to get to the newly opened Patrick Mouratoglou Tennis Center at the Ritz-Carlton Naples, Tiburón. Open to anyone, tennis players can book lessons with coaches trained in Mouratoglou's legendary method (he has coached Serena Williams, Serena Williams, Coco Gauff, Holger Rune, and Stefanos Tsitsipas). Mouratoglou's Methodology is based on the idea that every individual is unique and uses customization to adapt to each player's needs. This hyper-personalized approach to teaching is a tennis geek's dream. On the return trip, swing by Norman Love Chocolatier (which is just down the road from the airport) and stock up on a selection of his amazing truffles.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Delta Air Lines' 100th year takes flight
In 1925, what would become Delta Air Lines started as the world's first aerial crop-dusting operation in the Mississippi Delta region. Nearly a century after its first passenger flight, the airline has survived mergers, recessions and bankruptcy, growing from a single passenger route to an international carrier with more than 5,000 flights a day. Correspondent Kris Van Cleave talks with Delta's CEO Ed Bastian about the airline's future amid worries about the economy and aviation safety; visits the Delta Flight Museum in Atlanta; and attends a "garage sale" where the airline's fans can buy pieces of aviation history.
CBS News
25-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Delta Air Lines' 100th year takes flight
When you picture a garage sale, you might think of your neighbor's driveway down the street, not an aviation workshop in the shadow of the world's busiest airport, where Delta Air Lines holds their monthly surplus sale. Delta fans came from as far as Michigan and even Korea to buy the stuff the airline no longer needs, from seats to engine parts. It's a chance, these folks say, to own a piece of airline history. And how would they get the stuff home? "We actually flew down with empty bags," said one man. Sarah Zeis came in search of a particular piece of Delta history: a well-used beverage cart. "I actually need a bar cart in my apartment of these exact dimensions," she said. At the Delta Flight Museum Surplus Sale, Sarah Zeis found the perfect piece of aviation history to take home: a Delta Air Lines beverage cart. CBS News Getting it home will be a journey all its own. Proceeds from the sale go right across the parking lot, to the Delta Flight Museum, now celebrating the airline's 100th year – a first for an American carrier. A view of the Delta Flight Museum in Atlanta, which highlights the air carrier's 100-year history. CBS News It's a century of service that started without beverage carts … or passengers! According to archives director Marie Force, Delta owes its existence to a tiny pest: the boll weevil. "It is the most unique beginning of a U.S. airline, I think," she said. "It's the only airline that started as a crop-dusting company" Before Delta, there was Huff-Daland Dusters, started in 1925 in Macon, Georgia. Force said, "After the first growing season, they realized that most of the center of the business was in the Mississippi Delta region. And so, that's where the name Delta comes from." The origins of Delta Air Lines. Delta Air Lines And in 1929, Delta Air Lines' founder C.E. Woolman expanded the company from pest control to people. Its first passenger flight was from Dallas, Texas, to Jackson, Mississippi, with two stops in Louisiana along the way. A ticket cost $90 round trip – about $1,700 today. Expensive, and not for everyone. Force said, "At that time, about 80% of Delta's passengers were businessmen" – people trying to speed up a trip that took 12 hours by train to a five-hour flight. Nearly a century after that first flight, Delta now has more than 5,000 flights a day. The airline has survived mergers, recessions, and bankruptcy, growing from that single route to a nationwide carrier, and the global force we know today. "Glamour personified" If you've flown Delta lately, you've seen flight attendant Susan Slater in the pre-flight safety video. If you've flown Delta in the last 60 years, you may have shared a cabin with either Slater (who started with the airline on March 2, 1964) or Kay Carpenter (who started in January 1966). It was the "Golden Age" of air travel, that romanticized era of flights with exceptional service, extravagant meals, and everyone dressed to the nines. Susan Slater appears in Delta's pre-flight safety video. CBS News Back then, said Slater, "You had to be unmarried. Your hair couldn't touch your collar. You had a weight restriction. Back then I think I weighed 103 pounds and I was 5 foot 2-and-a-half. I'm five feet now, barely, and not 103!" I asked, "What was it about the job that you think spoke to you so much?" "All I knew was that this was glamour personified," Slater replied. Atmosphere Research Group's Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst, says there is no need to be so quite so nostalgic: "We certainly had a so-called Golden Age of flying back in the early 1960s," he said. "But it was less convenient. There were fewer flights. You often had to connect. And it certainly wasn't as reliable and safe as it is today. "We're in the new type of Golden Age now, where flying is a lot more accessible," he said. "You can either buy or create a much nice journey for yourself. You can buy an extra leg room seat. You can pay for priority boarding. And by the way, if you don't need or value those things or perhaps can't afford it, you're not being charged for services that you don't want." Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Air Lines, said, "Air travel is one of the great bargains. If you think about the average fare today versus where it was 30, 40 years ago, it's less than half of what you pay in real dollars." While low fares are sought after by some fliers, Delta has built its business around a premium experience, according to Bastian: "The single biggest reason why people chose an airline was fare; whoever had the lowest cost won. And Delta, well, yes, we have a product to compete on the lower end. [But] the majority of our revenue comes from higher-end tickets." Their 100th summer is about to take flight, amid clouds of uncertainty … worries about a slowing economy and aviation safety. But Bastian says it could still be their busiest ever, as he looks to the future. So, what does he see for Delta's next hundred years? "When you think in the United States, you know, air travel is relatively ubiquitous – you jump on a plane almost any hour of the day and get to almost anywhere you want, you know, pretty, pretty easily," Bastian said. "However, when you think about the world, and you realize that only one in five people in the world has even been on an airplane, it's pretty remarkable. We need to figure out ways to make it accessible, to make it affordable, to make it sustainable." I said, "Part of that legacy is just how much the world has shrunk in those 100 years." "Yeah, that's what we do," Bastian said. "We make the world a more connected place, a smaller place. And that's needed now more than ever." While Delta helped shrink the world in the 20th century, they hope their own growth continues, thanks to folks like Susan Slater and Kay Carpenter. "It's been a wonderful adventure," Carpenter said. "I never dreamed that I would be here for this long. When I started, we had just small airplanes. We flew to small cities. And now we fly to six continents. So, I tell all these new hire flight attendants to always remember that one mile on a highway is going to take you exactly one mile. But a mile on a runway will take you anywhere." Kay Carpenter and Susan Slater have been serving Delta passengers since the mid-1960s. CBS News For more info: Story produced by John Goodwin. Editor: Jason Schmidt. See also:
USA Today
11-04-2025
- Business
- USA Today
How Delta's first 100 years took off—with grit, heart and a Boeing 767 bought by employees
How Delta's first 100 years took off—with grit, heart and a Boeing 767 bought by employees Show Caption Hide Caption USA TODAY's preview of Delta's new airplane interiors A previous version of this video misidentified a level of class offered on Delta flights. Delta Air Lines celebrated its 100th anniversary, marking a century of growth from its origins as a crop-dusting service. The newly renovated Delta Flight Museum showcases the airline's history, featuring aircraft, artifacts, and interactive exhibits. The "Spirit of Delta," a Boeing 767 purchased through employee fundraising, is a centerpiece of the museum. ATLANTA ― The "Spirit of Delta" Boeing 767 is truly the centerpiece of the airline's newly-overhauled flight museum. It fills the bulk of a room in a converted aircraft hangar, and no matter where you stand, your eyes can't help but track back to it. It's not the only plane at the museum, but it is arguably the most important to the airline. Delta is the first U.S. carrier to reach 100 years old, and current and former employees say the Spirit of Delta encapsulates the company's culture over the last century. Delta's history Delta wasn't always a major U.S. airline. In fact, it started its life on March 2, 1925, as Huff Daland Dusters, a crop-dusting service in Macon, Georgia. A few months later, the company's headquarters moved to Monroe, Louisiana, and for the first few years, crop dusting was the company's primary focus. A group of investors acquired Huff Daland's assets in December of 1928 and reincorporated as Delta Air Service (named after the Mississippi River delta). A few months later, on June 17, 1929, Delta flew its first paying passengers from Dallas to Jackson, Mississippi, with stops in Shreveport and Monroe, Louisiana. Marie Force, archives director at the Delta Flight Museum, told USA TODAY that she especially loves looking at photos from the company's earliest days. 'You're looking at a dirt field, you know, and it looks like some sheds in the background and it really captures just how pioneering and amazing it was to fly, to have air service in these towns,' she said, talking about a black and white photo the museum received of a little girl standing with her father in Shreveport in front of a 1929 Travel Air single-engine prop plane operated by Delta. 'If you're thinking about a hundred years, aviation really isn't that old, you know, compared to railroads, so we're really talking about modern history, and so you still have a chance of capturing some of that early history,' Force said. She added that as an archivist, she tries to learn the story behind every item and record as many oral histories as possible from current and former employees. Needless to say, Delta has grown, expanded, and adapted in the last 100 years and is now one of the largest and most profitable airlines in the world. In 2024, Delta earned $1.7 billion in operating income. The airline has a fleet of more than 990 planes, according to It employs around 100,000 people and serves 290 destinations on six continents, according to the Delta corporate fact sheet. One former flight attendant, Diane Carvelli, told USA TODAY that in almost 37 years working with Delta, starting in 1965, she witnessed a lot of changes at the airline firsthand, but always felt like the company was a big family. 'When we took care of each other, it just was an exciting job,' she said. 'Sometimes you'd be somewhere, and you'd think, wow, and I'm getting paid for this. It's a wonderful opportunity for young people, and then you grow into it and it's part of your life and it's hard to ever leave it.' In fact, Carvelli was one of three flight attendants who led a campaign to purchase a Boeing 767 for the airline. Now known as the Spirit of Delta and on display in the flight museum, it was the airline's first 767 and employees, former employees and friends of the airline raised $30 million toward its purchase. 'That airplane belongs to not only the Delta people in Delta, but the community,' she said. The new flight museum The Delta Flight Museum reopened to the public on April 7 after its first major overhaul since 1995. The museum features multiple former Delta aircraft as well as artifacts from across the airline's history. Force, the archivist, said that it's not possible to display everything in the archives at once but that she works closely with other museum staff to make sure the full breadth of the company's history is always represented. 'We are very much a living archive. You are not looking at lots of dusty boxes back here,' she said. Force emphasized that Delta's employees have always valued keeping track of their history and said the museum relies heavily on artifact donations from current and former employees and their families. 'The Delta employees started (the archives) themselves, you know, in the 1950s. Once that first generation was starting to retire, realizing that, oh, they're carrying this corporate memory out the door with them,' Force said. 'How do we capture the story of what their contributions are and what they did? We're continuing that legacy.' Of course, the planes on display are a big draw, but one of the most captivating exhibits in the new museum is a wall of artifacts organized by color. It includes everything from an original seat that was installed on one of Delta's first planes to uniforms from all different eras and iterations of the airline. Delta in 2025 is an amalgamation of many smaller airlines that were folded together over the years, and that display represents the history of Delta's entire 'family tree.' Delta's plans for the future Delta executives in earnings calls over the years have touted the carrier's position as a premium airline and the first choice for many travelers. However, current and former employees say it's the family-like culture that makes the airline what it is, and Carvelli said it's something that the airline should continue to focus on in the future. 'Delta cares for its people, and everybody says, well, we care for our people, but they really care,' she said. For Force, the Flight Museum is also a way to inspire the next generation of aviation professionals. 'We're always thinking about that, you know? How can we help encourage children to think about aviation as a career? And maybe not just a pilot or flight attendant, but behind the scenes on aircraft maintenance and stuff,' she said. 'That's what I love about the stories, is that there's so many, once you've collected them along with the item, you know, whether it's a photograph or an artifact, it just adds so much richness and to the whole experience. It makes it personal.' Zach Wichter is a travel reporter and writes the Cruising Altitude column for USA TODAY. He is based in New York and you can reach him at zwichter@
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Yahoo
I visited a rare Boeing 747 that Delta saved from the scrapyard. See inside the time capsule of flying's golden age.
A Boeing 747 is one of the most popular exhibits at the Delta Flight Museum in Atlanta. This particular plane was the first Boeing 747-400 ever made and entered service in 1989. The jet flew for Delta until 2015 and became a museum exhibit in 2017. The Boeing 747 is one of the most famous planes in aviation history. But newer, more efficient twin-engine airliners have relegated the Queen of the Skies to retirement or to flying cargo. With no US airlines operating scheduled passenger service using a 747, the easiest way for many people to see a jumbo jet in person is to visit The 747 Experience at the Delta Flight Museum in Atlanta. I recently had the chance to tour the freshly renovated Delta Flight Museum and its Boeing 747. The 747 looms large over the entrance gate to Delta's Flight Museum. The museum is housed in a pair of historic hangars at Delta Air Lines headquarters on the northern edge of Atlanta's airport. Despite its prominent position at the museum, the 747 was actually a minor player in Delta's century-long history. The carrier took delivery of its first Boeing 747-100 in 1970 but soon realized that a smaller widebody like the Lockheed L-1011 would better suit its needs. As a result, Delta had returned all five of its 747-100s back to Boeing by 1977. Delta would not operate the 747 again until 2008. The 747 preserved at the museum, N661US, known within Delta as Ship 6301, is an important piece of aviation history. Despite being Boeing's 696th jumbo jet, it was the first upgraded 747-400 to be built. The -400 was a major step forward for the 747 as it not only increased range and performance but also introduced modern technology like digital instrument displays and more powerful flight computers, eliminating the need for a flight engineer. The -400 dominated the skies during the 90s and early 2000s, accounting for roughly half of the more than 1,500 747s produced during its five-decade-long run. Ship 6301 served as the prototype for the 747-400 and made its first flight on April 29, 1988. Pratt & Whitney then used the aircraft as a test bed for its PW4000 series engines, which would power all of Delta's 747-400s. The plane entered commercial service with Northwest Airlines in December 1989. Ship 6301 joined the Delta fleet in 2008 following its merger with Northwest. The jet logged more than 61 million miles before retiring from service in September 2015. Delta's entire 747 fleet was retired by the end of 2017. Following its retirement, Delta turned the jumbo jet into a permanent fixture at its headquarters. The 747 Experience opened in March of 2017 as a museum exhibit and event space. From the museum parking lot, you approach the rear of the aircraft. The entrance to the 747 Experience is at the front of the aircraft, right past its port wing. Here are a couple of its Pratt & Whitney engines. Each one of its four PW4056 turbofan engines produces 57,000 lbs of thrust, helping a full-loaded 747-400 fly nearly 7,000 miles. A short elevator ride takes up to the boarding door. Part of the plane's cabin remains intact, while other parts have had its walls and ceiling removed. Take a left turn toward the front of the plane and you'll find seats rows of economy class seats. When it was in service, the plane was configured to carry 376 passengers, of whom 328 were in its Economy and Economy Comfort cabins. At the nose of the aircraft is its first-class cabin. These Zodiac Aerospace flatbed seats are a predecessor to today's Thompson Vantage XL DeltaOne suites. The 747's front galley has been preserved as well. The aircraft's galleys, the economy cabin, and the upper deck have been removed. Walk up the stairs to reach the 747's iconic upper deck. The 747-400 has a stretched upper deck with greater seating capacity than the original 747-100/200 series. While the upper deck of Delta's original 747s had luxury lounges, there are just more DeltaOne seats. The aircraft operated with a total of 48 DeltaOne seats onboard across two decks. At the front of the upper deck is the 747's cockpit. This is the first version of the 747 to operate with a two-person crew without a flight engineer. Right behind the cockpit is the pilot crew rest bunks. Due to the long trans-oceanic routes the aircraft flew, it usually operated with at least one relief pilot who took over flying duties when one of the main crew rested. There's a glass partition at the back of the upper deck showing the main deck below. The partition also reveals the cables that physically connect the pilot's yoke to the plane's control surfaces. The main economy class cabin has been stripped bare to reveal the inner workings of the aircraft. The walls are covered by displays on the aircraft's history. Parts of the floor have been replaced by glass panels. This section gives museumgoers a view of the jet's air conditioning system. Further back, there is another glass floor section showing the aircraft's cargo compartment. The 747 was designed to be able to carry cargo as well as it does passengers. In fact, some airlines have even ordered 747 Combi models that haul cargo on the main deck behind the passenger compartment. At the very of the cabin is the plane's exposed pressure dome. The dome is the end cap that helps keep the cabin pressurized. Next to the pressure dome is the entrance to the stairs that lead to the plane's flight attendant crew rest. The crew rest compartment is comprised of a series of bunks immediately above the aft passenger cabin. For those looking for some fresh air, there is an observation platform over the starboard wing. Access to the 747 Experience is included in the general admission ticket to the museum. Read the original article on Business Insider
