United Airlines is the oldest U.S. airline – not Delta. That’s true, even though Delta is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, and both United and American won’t celebrate theirs until next year.
Right now American is promoting its centennial with the slogan ‘forever forward’. But it’s all backward-looking, old accomplishments and little about where they’re actually going.
Delta, though, seems to have shifted its origin story to claim 1925 as its birth year.
- The June 2004 issue of Delta’s inflight magazine commemorated 75 years for the airline.
- The Delta name was adopted in 1928 and passenger service began in 1929. So they claimed their birth year was 1929 back then.
- It’s only been 21 years since then, but somehow they aged 25 years during that time?
What happened in the interim? Well, they merged with Northwest Airlines. That gives them a credible claim to a history starting in 1926, just like American Airlines and United. But that’s not good enough for Delta, which more than anything is about narrative (they rent out the Sphere in Las Vegas for their CEO to introduce… a partnership with DraftKings that wasn’t even done with and that they’d swap out working wiht Lyft with Uber).
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
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.
United, American and Northwest all trace to 1926! And so does Delta (via Northwest Airlines).
United’s first Varney flight in April 1926 pre-dates Robertson’s July 1926 air mail route, so technically United’s predecessor got there first. Northwest Airways, Inc. was incorporated on September 1, 1926, launched its first airmail service on October 1 between Minneapolis and Chicago, and began passenger service in 1927.
So United is the oldest U.S. airline, American second oldest, and Delta third – all by a few months. But since that’s not good enough for Delta’s narrative, they changed their mind about when they were founded. Delta had long claimed that they were founded, prior to merging with Northwest, in 1929. The Northwest merger gives them a 1926 founding. But they’ve pivoted to claim 1925 – and be first.
Huff Daland Dusters 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.
I write about this all because it strikes me as the most Delta thing ever. Delta is a good airline. They may even be 80% as good as they say they are. But they can’t just let the facts speak for themselves. They have to tell a story… even if the story is only tangentially related to the facts.
By the by, 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. The second-oldest airline currently in operation is Avianca.
(HT: Luke)
Par for the course for Bastain.
@ Gary — And we ironically have DL to thank for Macon (and Montgomery and Columbus and many other places) basically having no air service. Their needs to be another major airport in the region, but Delta will do ANYTHING to stop it. Delta holds back south-central GA and south-central AL from attaining their full growth potential. Well, that and the idiot voters that live there.
@ Matthew — Delta lie? Never! (Clutches pearls…)
In the USA a few lies a day are a norm from what I can tell. If the leader lies publicly on the daily, what’s the big deal if a company does once in awhile?
Typical Dulltah arrogance – lest we forget, in a 50-50 deal, Delta takes the hyphen.
As a proud United retiree, DL can go pound sand. We know we were first!
If only EASTERN had held on, they would have been in the mix too
April 19, 1926 as Pitcairn
Before Delta (imagine that)
Miss them every day
Thank you for the great review.
If only EASTERN had held on, they would have been in the mix too
April 19, 1926 as Pitcairn
Even before Delta (imagine that)
Miss them every day
Blah, blah… semantics. Here goes Gary, again… riling up the base! Clearly it’s working… @Gene already on the attack. Where’s our knight, @Tim Dunn, to slay this dragon? Fear not, my liege… I still prefer Delta, and very much like KLM, especially those Delft Blue Houses…
Making up things to tell a narrative that doesn’t exist is certainly the most delta thing ever…
@gene I guess I’ll bite…
MGM? Does it need more service than the ATL, CLT, DCA, and DFW it already has? That doesn’t seem all that bad for them?
MCN is EAS so it’s not really that surprising that one carrier serves it with a subsidy from the government while others don’t think it’s worth while to compete with a subsidy.
CSG — I guess but it’s not like airlines haven’t tried like AA and DL. It’s just low yield army traffic there.
If anything, only one airport in Atlanta providing all the connectivity to a place like CSG is likely the only reason that airport had service
Don’t get me wrong. Citizens of Atlanta benefit from the enormous airport and nonstops to the world from a unique dots per capita perspective, but their pocket books certainly do suffer from the cabal of Delta and the city preventing new airports under fake citizen groups.
@ 1990 — United is better if you want to fly to more than five international destinations in something other than a POS 763.
D. Dumb-ass
E. Ed Bastian
L. Lies
T. To
A. All of us
@ MaxPower — In 2023, MGM had 181,000 enplanements vs a metro population of 385,000. By comparison, LIT had 1.1 million enplanements vs a metro population of 748,000. Why such a huge difference? ATL airport. I suppose one could argue that the access to ATL is a benefit to those living in the MGM metro, especially those in the eastern part, which is probably a 2-hour drive from ATL. In traffic, it probably takes that long to drive from Athens, GA to ATL.
@Gene — True, true.. if one *needs* to fly from NRT-UBN or EWR-GOH on aging 737s with only recliners up front… Ulaanbaatar? More like Ulaan-byebye. And, Greenland?! Better get GOH-ing… (I’m just havin’ fun over here.)
Well, Gene. You certainly win the ‘random comparison to make a point’ award.
I wish I had the interest to dissect LIT vs MGM travel patterns but given service at both airports, I’m not sure ATL is to blame for MGM woes 😉
But CLT is always a good airport to blame for most things, when in doubt
The original company predecessor of Delta was either founded in 1925 or it wasn’t.
It was.
And, no, Linda, United wasn’t first and isn’t first in much of anything now. The only thing it WAS first in is holding the record for the longest and most expensive airline bankruptcy in US airline history.
and UA does fly more ASMs and burn more jet fuel to generate less revenue.
and UA is #4 in the US domestic market and #6 in Florida. Apparently, fixating on adding flights to Greenland and Mongolia isn’t profit-maximizing after all.
Well, Tim. When you worked for Delta, as Gary said. Delta said they were founded in 1929 😉
@Tim Dunn — Our knight in shining armor! Keep climbing! 100 more years!
@MaxPower — Thank you for not neglecting the CLT…
Airlines lie all of the time. It is part of who they are. They lie about the weather. They lie about carry-on space. They lie about food. Those are just a few examples. Frankly I would be surprised if the lying didn’t go all of the way to the top.
@jns — So, like, are you a full-blown nihilist, or a mere cynic? Like, my goodness, they aren’t lying all the time, only when it’s an inconvenient truth, like, whoopsie, we forgot to load the beverage cart, so it’s gonna be an extra 15 minutes delay.
Delta began passenger air transportation in 1929. That has never been in doubt.
They began as a company in 1925 killing bugs.
As usual, DL uses other people’s crises to deliver solutions.
and, Max, if UA has been around longer, then why haven’t they figured out how to generate as much revenue from their hubs as DL does.
Here are the average domestic fares for the top competitive hubs (ranked by decreasing local market size)
ORD – $414
DEN 372
ATL 442
BOS 369
EWR 429
DFW 442
SEA 393
SFO 433
PHX 389
LGA 338 (perimeter restricted)
JFK 417
MSP 456 (hello)
IAH 430
PHL 429
DTW 464
DCA 382 (perimeter restricted, w/ exceptions)
BWI 386
MIA 370
CLT 451
SLC 471 (even bigger HELLO)
How is it that DL managed to build 4 super hubs that generate far higher fares than anything anyone has but AA and UA haven’t used their supposed greater longevity to figure out what DL figured out?
Mongolia and Greenland fares can’t hold a candle to what DL gets from its super hubs.
If airline pilots have to retire at 65 years of age, so should airlines.
Life is short, I say let’s celebrate this year and again in 2029!
right on, L737,
and let’s all blow some bubbles for AA and UA when their times come.
And AS will eventually too.
Don’t leave them out.
Any US airline that makes it to 2030 deserves lots of bubbles
@L737 — A twofer! I’m in!