S5E7: The Delta Difference: A Century of People and Progress

Transcript:

Jason Dressel  0:11  

Today on The History Factory Podcast Nina Thomas and 100 Years of Delta Air Lines. 

Hello and welcome to the History Factory Podcast, the podcast at the intersection of business and history. I’m your host today, Jason Dressel and we have Nina Thomas, Director of exhibits and public programs at the Delta Flight Museum here with us to talk about Delta and some of the history and activations the airline is implementing to celebrate 100 years. So please welcome Nina Thomas.

Nina Thomas, welcome to the History Factory Podcast. 

 

Nina Thomas  0:58  

Thanks for having me. 

 

Jason Dressel  1:01  

My pleasure. Well, first, happy 100, this is audio only, but you look fabulous.

 

Nina Thomas  1:08  

Thank you. 

 

Jason Dressel  1:08  

Yeah, but no, seriously, happy 100 to Delta. Quite, quite a milestone, and maybe we can begin the conversation there. What is this milestone that Delta is celebrating this year, what’s the origin story of Delta? How did the company and the airline come to be?

I know that the history of the commercial aviation industry is a complicated one, so it might be fun to kind of start the story there and unpack it a little bit. 

 

Nina Thomas  1:36  

Yeah, so Delta this year is celebrating 100 years of their origin. So I would say in the past, Delta has celebrated their anniversary on the first year of passenger service, which wasn’t until 1929 but really, Delta’s roots go back to 1925.

Which also means that Delta is celebrating 100 years before some of the other commercial airlines. So it’s a special time, and it’s an exciting time at Delta this year, because there’s a number of different ways that Delta’s, you know, partying to celebrate 100 years. But yeah, Delta got its start with the Huff Daland Dusters. So that started in 1925 so it is an airline that started not from flying passengers, but from defeating the boll weevil that was attacking crops in the south. And so it was, you know, peaches and cotton and other crops here that were being attacked by the boll weevil. And so the Huff Daland Dusters operation was a crop dusting, and they were in Macon, Georgia to start. And then they moved to Monroe, Louisiana. And then that was about when CE woman, which is Delta’s founder for CEO,

founded Delta Air Service in 1928 and then took over Huff Daland Dusters and renamed it. And then in 1929 that’s when Delta started flying passengers for the first time. So kind of an interesting way to start very tiny, and it’s kind of fun now to have so many. I mean, Delta has 100,000 employees, and our museum being right on campus, we’re always, you know, doing tours for employees. And, you know, doing a lot of events here for employees, and most of them, you know, I don’t think realize, like, the global Delta brand that, you know, today is really was so tiny when it started, and that vision, I don’t even know if they realize how big they would become. So it’s fun to go around and be like, actually, they started crop dusting. Like, that’s, you know, not even flying people yet. So, yeah, kind of an interesting start. 

 

Jason Dressel  3:42  

Yeah. And Wasn’t there a legislation act around mail that also helped kind of unlock the passenger aviation industry? I feel like I know just enough there to be dangerous. 

 

Nina Thomas  3:56  

Yeah? And really, Delta did some mail service, but that really wasn’t that’s what’s interesting about Delta, is the other airlines that were heavily what they did, but Delta was really in the crop dusting industry, more so than mail. Of course, they did some of that mail, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t as long as some of the other airlines. 

 

Jason Dressel  4:16  

Got it. So all these airlines were basically flying mail, crop dusting material and other items before they were essentially given the keys to be able to fly people around. 

 

Nina Thomas  4:27  

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

 

Jason Dressel  4:31  

So, as you think about over the last 100 Years of the airline and it kind of evolving into Delta, you know, what were some of the sort of events or developments that led to it making that transition and becoming more of, obviously, what we now think of when we think of of a global airline, company and brand? 

 

Nina Thomas  4:53  

Yeah, that’s a good question, because it’s definitely something we as we renovated the museum, we’re thinking, okay, there’s 100 years, obviously there’s a lot of stories you want to tell. What are the most historically significant stories? What are the things that really changed the airline industry? And as we got through, you know we have a DC-3, we have a fully restored DC-3. That aircraft in general really transformed the airline industry because that’s what made commercial airlines profitable. So previously, it was not necessarily something you would make a ton of money on. But the DC-3, and the amount of people they could travel, at the speed they could travel, it really revolutionized the entire industry.

And of course, Delta was flying the DC-3s. We have a great like I said, a great example of it in the museum. And then World War Two hits, and there, you know, that changed everything for everyone, right? Everyone was changing their efforts. So Delta started transforming some of their aircrafts to be for military use, and, of course, transported people during that time. And then you start to see women coming into the industry, and, you know, a heavily male dominated field. So that definitely changed some things. So then in the inter with the introduction of the jet service in 1959.

That changed everything for the airlines. That meant that you could travel faster in shorter periods of time. The jet allowed transatlantic travel, so a lot more travel between the US and Europe. So that definitely changed things. And I would say one of the things that we focused on was talking about Delta’s growth through its mergers and acquisitions, because Delta is actually a family of 40 airlines. So through the years, they’ve acquired different airlines. And of course, every time they acquired an airline, that meant new routes, they were acquiring the routes. So with Pan Am, for example, that wasn’t a traditional merger, but they did get some of their routes, and that changed where Delta could fly. So very

As you watch Delta’s history, we have these really great route maps that you can see the growth where it starts. As you know, it’s a very small regional carrier. And as it grows, and as its family grows, it’s flying all over the world. So that definitely is a big part of Delta’s history. And what makes Delta Delta, and in some of the mergers, for example, like Northwest later, that was a big deal, because you you got some of their hubs, and that changed and helped shape the culture of Delta, because you have people that worked for one airline for a very long time coming to work for this airline. You’re basically coming together and having to work together and figure out a way forward. And that was sort of a success story, because I don’t know that all the time that works that way, but seeing how Delta has been shaped by that is definitely,

changes with employees, right? So people were, some airlines were having to let people go. And Delta is kind of, you know, a big story of the spirit of Delta happening around that time. So during that time, there’s a lot of other airlines letting people go, downsizing. There was a lot of uncertainty, and Delta kind of doubled down and said, We’re going to take care of our people. And they decided not, not just to not do pay cuts and not to not let anybody go, but decided to give everyone a pay raise. And everyone was so excited about this that they wanted to give back to Delta for, you know, supporting them. So it became this very much like this loyalty group, and there was a grassroots effort to raise money. And the idea was to purchase Delta’s very first 767, and give it to Delta by the people. So they have these grassroots efforts with retirees, current employees, just friends of Delta that raised $30 million and they bought this plane, and it’s coming.

This was a night it was unveiled in 1982 so the refer the the effort kind of started right after deregulation in 1978 and then that process happened over a course of a couple years. And we have the Spirit of Delta in the museum, so we get to tell that story. People can actually walk through and sit in their seats, and people still feel who are still alive, who, you know, I just talked to the last pilot who ever flew it, and he recorded something for the exhibits. You hear his voice when you step on the plane, and he’s saying, you know, welcome to the Spirit of Delta. And it’s the last pilot that ever flew it. And the flight attendant. There were three flight attendants that had the idea. One of them, Diane Carvelli, is still alive. She’s the only one still alive, and she did a recording for us, so you can actually see her standing in a hologram inside the plane, and she’s telling the story. But you know, when you hear their stories and you hear them talk, it’s like, it’s their plane, right? They’re like.

Yeah, that’s my seat. That’s my tire. So it was, like, it definitely became a culture moment for Delta. And so when you hear, and you still will hear, like, the Spirit of Delta, or Delta spirit, and it all goes back to that time where they really felt connected. You know, the employees felt very connected to the airline. So those are some of the things. 

 

Jason Dressel  10:17  

Yeah and It’s interesting because, I mean and you touched on this before with the transition to the DC3, it really reinforces that the commercial aviation industry has always been challenging. I think  sometimes we think of it as now being a much more challenging business than it was once. Cause you think of that sort of golden era of the 1950s and 1960s but your point is interesting, it has always been a really complicated business to run. 

And all of the airlines have had these pressures, obviously, of these, you know, big events like 9/11 and the pandemic. And then, of course, there’s just kind of the regular challenges of, you know, volatility of, you know, fuel price and weather and logistics. But I’m curious if there are other kinds of moments that are unique to Delta in terms of this, like, really kind of existential moment. Was that kind of that story of 1982 or are there other kind of periods or crises that that you know, Delta weathered through and ultimately came out stronger on the other side,

 

Nina Thomas  11:52  

Delta pioneered the hub and spoke system. So that was a really big deal, because then, if you think about it now, and you think about Atlanta, Atlanta being one of the biggest airports, if not the biggest, in the country. And some of that is due to that system, right? That started in the 50s, where you start to route everyone through Atlanta, and you have all those connections, making something a hub. And so I think that was Delta pioneering it. But of course, all the other airlines ended up doing it. But I think that is an interesting,

 

Jason Dressel  14:03  

Yeah, that’s really cool. That’s very cool. And as part of the work, I mean, obviously you’re so familiar with the history and the stories and the archives of the company in preparation for the Centennial and for the renovation of the museum, did you come across any new stories, or maybe a story that you’ve always known, but, you know, it revealed kind of a completely different dimension to that story. Any fun new discoveries over the last couple of years? 

 

Nina Thomas  14:30  

Yeah, I think so everything is kind of new to me. I mean, I’ve been in this position for about two years. Basically when I started it was doing this renovation, so everything I learned was slightly new. But our archives director, of course, has been here over 20 years, and they have been working on digitizing things. And they started digitizing a lot more, knowing the 100 years was coming up, so they were starting to see photos that we really haven’t seen before. And that was really fun for us to go through and be like, Wow, no.

I saw this photo, or I didn’t even know there was a photo of this, like a lot of the photos of women working actually during World War II, really cool photos that were unveiled there that we haven’t ever shown before because we didn’t have them digitized. But I also, I think I worked on a virtual timeline for just 100 years. And it’s really hard to do a timeline, because you have to really have some criteria to say, okay, is this historically significant? Is this meaningful, or a theme or something? So otherwise, you have 1000s of things on there. But one of the things we learned was we were just trying to figure out, like, when things happened, and I think because the nature of, you know, this business is like, everything’s moved so fast, people aren’t thinking like, Oh, I’m going to save this for the records or for the archives, right? Nobody’s thinking that way. It’s just, let’s just do this and move on, type of thing. And so we were really trying to find, like, some of the first, you know, the first, the firsts of Delta. So, like, there’s a lot of employee groups, and we were trying to figure out when those were started, and nobody knew. And so that led us to do more research, I guess, of like, when did this happen? When was the first group for working families? When was the first group for, you know, Asian Americans who started this group at Delta? And so that was kind of like a, I guess, a research hunt. But, yeah, I think it was more for me, finding those stories and finding where they live, and kind of inspired me to want to do more research. 

 

Jason Dressel  16:25  

Very cool. So tell me about the renovation that you, that you all undertook at the museum. Would love to hear more about that. 

 

Nina Thomas  16:35  

Yeah, so we had not that long to do this renovation.

But what you know, our goal was, you know, the museum’s exhibits hadn’t been refreshed in 10 years, so a lot of the things that people had seen, you know, if you’d been there in 10 years, you’d already seen it, and it just needed some TLC. And one of the things we really wanted to do was just humanize the experience and make it more interactive. And so we had a theme. We went with the theme, humanity lifts us, where we really were trying to tell more human stories and connect more with people. And so we went through this process of, you know, choosing those stories, choosing the exhibits that we were going to do. And then, of course,

what was our about three months we had to actually execute. So that was a very crazy time, but we ended up with some great exhibits. We introduced a new kids area, which is fantastic because we didn’t have, like a play area for kids where we’re teaching them steam,

steam and stem and things like that. And so that’s really exciting. And just being able to put on display different artifacts that we’ve never put on display before, we have this really great exhibit we’re calling the colors of Delta, and it has 261

artifacts in it, and it’s just this giant wall of color. So it’s all by color, and it tells Delta’s 40 year airline story. So it’s got artifacts from all of its family of airlines, and it’s a very beautiful way to tell that story. So it’s been fun to get creative and think, you know, how can we connect with people, and how can we make this more fun? And we have a lot, you know, we’ve used AI to regenerate some of our historic photos, so when you touch them, they come to life. And that was fun, especially because people are like, Oh, I didn’t know you had a video footage of that. Like, well, not really,

 

Jason Dressel  18:37  

And what are some of the other things that Delta has been doing as part of the centennial year. 

 

Nina Thomas  18:42  

Yeah. So they have a number of activations. They’ve, you know, kind of kicked off the 100 Year with Ed Bastian speaking at CES so he spoke at the spear. That was really exciting. And the museum renovation was part of the centennial celebration. So we had a giant gala where people came in and got to see the new renovated space, and then some people came and spoke, and that was really cool. And they’re doing a couple other things. If you’ve flown Delta recently, you’ll know that they redid their safety video, which they’re known for, and they use some uniforms from our archives, and it kind of tells 100 years of history. And they have a couple other things planned, but I think some of them are surprises, but there’s definitely a lot of merch, and people are really excited about the merch.

 

Jason Dressel  19:29  

That’s awesome. And what’s been so far, your favorite part of the centennial year?

 

Nina Thomas  19:36  

I think it’s just been exciting to see people get interested in Delta’s history in that way. I think, you know, of course, everyone loves the museum, but I think we’re getting a different spotlight this year because people are really interested to learn about our history, and I think that’s been just because I work here. I’m excited to tell those stories. I’m excited that people want to bring their friends in, and they want to do tours for everybody.

Basically she started and she dealt with a lot of opposition, of course, as you can expect, and people would make comments to her about how she’s, you know, a novelty, or she doesn’t know what she’s doing. And I read the headlines now, and I see some comments on some of the headlines, when something goes wrong, and on a flight, people are like, Oh, it must be a woman, you know. And I found her story. We’re telling her story in the museum, and we’ve named one of the mannequins that we have like a new uniform on, we had to just pick a name. And I picked joy because her name’s Joy Walker, and I want to reinforce her, her story. And I think, you know, I think globally, they’re saying that about 95% of pilots are male, right? So only 5% is female, which is very low. So one of my kind of personal goals is to help more young girls and females want to become pilots. So my niece actually wants to become a pilot. So I’m really pushing for her. I think that would be so fantastic. But, yeah, I like her story, just because I think, you know, I’ve walked people through the museum, and I’ve shown that, and they’ve read some of her story and have said, wow, that’s still true. That’s still going on today, you know. And I think I like things that are relevant and push people to consider and challenge people just a little bit. Yeah, that’s awesome. So, what’s next? What’s next for Delta, you know, how do you see kind of the company, you know, continuing to use its history and legacy as it kind of heads to the future on the backside of the centennial. And what’s next for you there at the museum? Yeah, so I think, you know, Delta, of course, in their 100 years, they really credit their success to their people. You know, they always say that their people are their secret sauce, and their vision is still continuing to focus on that, the what they call the Delta difference. And you know, we see it every day, just, just different people doing different things that really exemplify that story. And I think that kind of gets its ground roots in that spirit of Delta story, right, that’s the Delta difference, and it kind of continues today. And I think you know that that’s true in our Delta tech ops team. We just our tech ops team is celebrating, can’t remember what they’re celebrating, but they just came and we did,

 

like I worked with their comms team because they wanted to do a big article about how tech ops supported the museum renovations. And you know, that was so great, because they built, we ended up suspending three large engines, which was a feat, and they built special mounts for them. They made the ADA accessible, like they’ve done all these great things. And I think their people are so great, and they’re always innovating, and they’re very creative in what they do. And I just, I think for Delta, they’re just, they’re continuing to innovate, they’re continuing to look at the industry. They’re always striving to make things better and more comfortable for people when they’re traveling. So I think they’re going to continue to do that. But it’s exciting to see what the momentum of this year will bring to Delta. It’s certainly the momentum that is bringing a lot for the museum. For us we’re working on, you know, we’re doing all sorts of tours. We actually celebrate 30 years tomorrow, so we’re excited. We’re doing special tours, and we’re, yeah, celebrating 30 years. So it’s a big year for Delta and for the museum.

 

Jason Dressel  24:00  

Awesome. Well, Nina, congratulations, happy 100 and happy 30 and thanks for joining us. 

 

Nina Thomas  24:06  

Thank you so much.

 

Jason Dressel  24:11  

Thanks again to Nina Thomas from Delta Airlines. Thanks to all of you for listening to the History Factory Podcast. I’m Jason Dressel. Be well. We’ll be back with a new episode soon.