About Delta Airlines
Delta Air Lines, Inc. (Pink Sheets: DALRQ) (IATA: DL, ICAO: DAL, and Callsign: Delta) is a major U.S. airline headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia that operates an expansive domestic and international network, spanning North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean. Delta lands in over 308 destinations in 52 countries, across 5 continents. Delta has a larger route network than any airline in the world and is the only major U.S. carrier that flies to Africa.
Delta operates hubs at Atlanta, Cincinnati, New York-JFK, and Salt Lake City; Delta's Atlanta hub is the largest airline hub in the world. Delta also has large domestic operations in many other cities, including Boston, Columbus, Fort Lauderdale, Hartford, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York-LaGuardia, Orlando, Raleigh, Tampa, and Washington-Reagan. Delta is the leading carrier in Florida, and carries more passengers across the Atlantic than any other carrier worldwide. Its major transatlantic gateways are Atlanta, Cincinnati, and New York-JFK. Its major Latin American gateways are Atlanta and its rapidly developing mini-hub in Los Angeles
In terms of passengers carried (approximately 119 million in 2005), Delta is the second-largest airline in the world (behind American Airlines). In terms of revenue passenger miles, Delta Air Lines is the third largest airline, after American Airlines and United Airlines.In terms of total operating revenues, Delta is the sixth-largest airline in the world

History
The company has its roots in Huff Daland Dusters, which was founded in 1924 in Macon, Georgia by several partners including Collett E. Woolman becoming the world's first aerial crop dusting company. Huff Daland moved to Monroe, Louisiana the following year. In 1928, Huff Daland Dusters was purchased by C.E. Woolman and renamed Delta Air Service after the Mississippi Delta, where its route connected Dallas, Texas to Jackson, Mississippi, via Shreveport and Monroe. The original directors of Delta Air Service were C.H. McHenry, Travis Oliver, and M.S. Biedenharn. By 1934, Delta began mail service from Charleston to Fort Worth, with stops in Columbia, Augusta, Atlanta, Birmingham, and Meridian along the way.
In 1970, Delta entered the "wide-body" jet era with the purchase of five Boeing 747s to service its new long-haul high density routes. The initial route was a Los Angeles-Dallas Love Field-Atlanta routing. Delta also had an interchange with Pan Am using Delta 747 to fly to Heathrow Airport in London. However, with the economic slowdown of the early 1970s, Delta found the aircraft too large for its routes and it sold them a few years later. Shortly thereafter, Delta leased a small number of DC-10s as a stopgap until its larger order of the new Lockheed L-1011 TriStars could be delivered.
In 1990, Delta became the first U.S. airline to operate the MD-11 aircraft. Delta's most dramatic expansion (at that time) came with its purchase of Pan Am's European routes in 1991 which included all north Atlantic routes and the Frankfurt, Germany hub, shortly before Pan Am declared bankruptcy. The purchase gave Delta the largest transatlantic route network, a small group of A310 aircraft, and the Worldport (Terminal 3) at JFK. Due to these acquisitions, Delta became and remains today the largest U.S. transatlantic carrier, in terms of passengers carried and number of flights operated. Delta also acquired Pan Am's northeastern shuttle, inheriting of a number of Boeing 727s, and forming what is today Delta Shuttle.
As early as 2004, in an effort to avoid bankruptcy, Delta announced a restructuring of the company that included job cuts, and an aggressive expansion of Atlanta operations by some 100 new flights, making it a 'super-hub' and requiring the airline to spread its flight schedule more evenly across the day.
On September 7, 2005, Delta announced that it would cut 26% of its flights at its Cincinnati hub and redeploy aircraft to its hubs in Atlanta and Salt Lake City.[14] The move will ultimately eliminate up to 1,000 jobs in Cincinnati. In addition and in hopes of increasing profit yields, the airline announced further international expansion into Europe and Latin America.