The legacy carriers are somewhat interesting, not due to their full-on-boyant history, but also the way they shape the industry as we know it today, and are continuously evolving the market as the days go by. Ever since the early 2000s, the legacy carriers have carried a negative image with them and turned the smiles of millions of passengers upside down. Known for their very basic customer service, the corporate persona that they've adopted to please their investors, the people of the US and the legacy carriers have often clashed with one another. Although the comments made regarding the airlines may be true to an extent, Delta Airlines can be seen as an airline which is making progress, trying to please the customer, what KPR, and an attempt to move forward. Although their future looks very bright, their past was a difficult one. So the naming of Delta Airlines occurred in 1928, when Collet Wallmann purchased the company and renamed it Delta Air Service and started flying passengers. But the true origin of the airline actually started in 1924 when it was only a tiny crop-dusting company in Northeastern Louisiana called Huff-Dalland-Dusters. Now, Collet Wallmann was mesmerized by the prospect of flight and wanted to launch his own airline. Little did he realize that it would become one of the biggest airlines in the world. So the world war happened, and the airline benefited by purchasing military aircraft at a very cheap price. At this point, their growth started to increase and they wanted to stretch their legs. So he decided to purchase Chicago on Southern Airlines in 1953. The takeover was almost a merger, which saw Delta flying under the carrier name of Delta CIS for the next two years. This was a great move for the airline because it provided them with their first international route. So they looked planes and they were growing, and to help with the increase of demand, they purchased new jet planes such as the DCAs. This allowed the airline to start flying to Europe in the 1970s and across the Pacific to Australia in the 1980s. There was a further expansion when Northeastern Airlines was acquired in August 1972, allowing it to expand firmly along the eastern sea board of the United States. By this time, they were consolidated and fairly established within the aviation market. However, the competition from all sides was getting more heated. As the saying in business goes, if you can't fight them, then buy them. And that's exactly what Delta did. So by 1986, they had their eyes on Western airlines. Many protests occurred from the public, and also the unions tried to stop the workforce integration. However, the efforts were only futile. The takeover was complete, and Western's former hub in Salt Lake City became Delta's major hub, allowing them to access destinations such as Mexico, Hawaii, and even Australia. Now we know that in the industry, you have to continuously innovate in order to stay alive and relevant. Delta was no exception. They introduced in flight entertainment in 1960s, where audio programming was introduced using headphones. They also adopted in flight movies, with projection equipment introduced on their L1011 fleet. Also, during the same time period, CRT monitors over the aisles were added to the 75 zone fleets. And they were also one of the first airlines to introduce and in-seat video system in 1999, which gained a lot of publicity on their early Boeing 777 aircraft. So by the mid 1990s, Delta was profitable long haul, but there was suffering increasing competition on short-haul routes. So the airline decided to launch Delta Express in 1996, in a attempt to compete with low-cost airlines on leisure-oriented routes. Its main base of operations was at Orlando, but in 2003 they moved from Orlando to JFK. They carried high loads from the northeast to Florida at very low fares, but they could never really compete with jet blue and other low-cost airlines. Delta Express was replaced by Song, which was a new low-fare airline that Delta introduced, but that was also dismantled a few years later. So the years moved on, and all the habits died very hard, and it's time to buy another airline. North-first airlines was taken over by Delta in October 2008, to form the world's biggest airline during that time. It took over two years to formally merge the two operations, schedules and reservation systems, but Delta completed acquisition of Northwest in January 2010, when the North-first airlines name and brand was formally retired. So all in all, Delta has a history of good management and profitability. In the early days, there were very practical and all is far on their feet. Their purchase new jets only when needed, they were aggressive, their avoided labour wars, they were continuously innovative, and most importantly, their global expansion of the airline in the post-war era elevated it to become one of the world's biggest airlines. Despite the difficulty that most of the industry finds itself in today, and the continuing challenges of operating in a deregulated environment, Delta will continue to have an impact on many people around the world.