The oldest airline operating today is KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, founded on October 7, 1919. It’s been in continuous operation under the same name since the beginning. It’s now 105 years old. The second-oldest airline currently in operation is Avianca.

Delta says that 2025 is its 100th birthday. Other than simply deferring to their marketing, I’m not so sure that’s fair. The claim to 1925 stems from the founding of the world’s first agricultural crop-dusting company, Huff Daland Dusters. That wasn’t an airline!

Credit: Delta

The Delta name was adopted in 1928 and passenger service began in 1929. But they still have a good claim to being founded in 1926. However 1925 is a stretch.

In some sense, United and American might be older?

• American Airlines traces its origins to several small carriers, including Robertson Aircraft Corporation (1926), which carried mail and passengers. The group included Colonial Air Transport and Southern Air Transport. In 1930, financier E. L. Cord brought together over 80 small carriers to form American Airways, Inc., offering a mix of passenger services and air mail routes.

• Varney Airlines, founded by Walter T. Varney on April 6, 1926, was one of the carriers that merged into United Airlines during its formation in 1931 under the umbrella of Boeing Air Transport. United was a direct product of Boeing’s antitrust-mandated divestiture. Continental Airlines, merged with united, also traces to Varney – Varney Speed Lines was a separate company founded in 1934 and renamed Continental Airlines in 1937 under new ownership.

Who So Many Airlines Launched In The Mid-1920s – And Then Changed Their Names

Many U.S. airlines launched following the Air Mail Act of 1925, which allowed private companies to carry mail. The 1925 Kelly Act authorized the Postal Service to contract with private airlines to carry the mail. That led to airlines received most of their revenue carrying mail. Often priced to the customer by the piece regardless of weight, with the government charged for weight, airlines were known to mail bricks and other large objects to themselves in other cities to pump up their revenue.

Credit: Delta

The 1930 Air Mail Act changed how mail was priced and gave broad contracting powers to the Postmaster General. The Postmaster used this power to consolidate contracts under three major airlines, forcing many airlines out of business. This came to fruition out of a 1930 meeting that became known as the ‘Spoils Conference’.

The government had dictated which airlines would survive and prosper, and awarded contracts to airlines that hadn’t been the lowest bidder. When the story of what transpired finally came out it was dubbed the Air Mail Scandal and it led to the cancellation of contracts and to the Roosevelt administration enlisting the US Army Air Corps to carry mail. They weren’t equipped to do this.

Accidents and deaths followed the Air Corps takeover of air mail, and contracts were finally returned to the private sector. None of the executives involved earlier could run airlines obtaining postal contracts and so leadership was jettisoned from the airlines.

None of the incumbent carriers were permitted to carry mail, so airlines changed their names – for instance Eastern Air Transport turned into Eastern Air Lines – and Northwest Airways to Northwest Airlines. All the major carriers who participated in the spoils conference received their old routes back under new contracts except United — which was apparently one of the only ones innocent of collusion.

Delta’s Transition From Crop-Dusting To Passenger Service

Delta was founded in Macon, Georgia, and later moved to Monroe, Louisiana. The business was initially combating boll weevil infestations in cotton crops. It was purchased by local investors and renamed Delta Air Service in 1928, beginning passenger service in 1929. Its first route was Dallas – Jackson, Mississippi. Delta Air Lines moved its headquarters to Atlanta in 1941.

Credit: Delta

The 100th Anniversary Should Be 2026 – Not 2025?

Passenger airline Delta fairly dates to 1926 – not 1925, as their 100th anniversary celebrations suggest, not 1928 when the Delta name began, and not 1929 when it started flying out of Dallas.

Credit: Delta

That’s because of acquisition of Northwest Airlines upon exit from bankruptcy in 2008. Northwest Airways was founded on September 1, 1926, in Minneapolis, primarily as an air mail carrier operating Chicago-Twin Cities starting in 1927 and then starting to carry passengers in 1928.

Northwest directly dates to 1926, and was acquired by Delta, so the airline dates its history back that far. It’s only if fighting boll weevil infestations in cotton crops counts that they can date themselves to 1925.

These Are The Oldest Airlines In The World

Here are the 5 oldest airlines in the world still flying today:

Airline	Founded	Note	Current Base
KLM	1919	Oldest airline, still operating under its original name	Amsterdam
Avianca	1919	Second-oldest airline, rebranded from SCADTA	Bogotá
Qantas	1920	Ironically, Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Now Not Based In Either	Sydney
Aeroflot	1923	Founded as Dobrolyot, rebranded Aeroflot – ‘air fleet’ – in 1932.	Moscow
Finnair	1923	Still operating under its original name	Helsinki

Czech wa actually slightly older than Finnair but ceased operations in October 2024.