A week after a terrorist tried to bring down Northwest 253 Delta has announced they will, in effect, liquidate the 84 year-old airline. The pre-planned move became possible when the Federal Aviation Administration approved issuing a single operating certificate to Delta. All Northwest references and logos will disappear, possibly as early as April when the website nwa.com will jump to delta.com.
The 84-year-old Northwest merged with Delta in April of 2008. to form the world's largest airline. They service 368 destinations for more than 170 million passengers each year.
Northwest references have been slowly disappearing as airport signage has been changed to Delta, staff has been re-uniformed, and planes repainted.
Delta and Northwest completed a task list of 10,000 items including the integration of nearly 500 manuals, specifications, programs, policies, and procedures.
Delta was founded on May 30,1924, as Huff Deland Dusters In Monroe, Louisiana. It began operations in 1929 after C.E. Woolman purchased the airline, renaming it Delta Air Service. After losing mail routes to American Airlines, Delta suspended operations for 4 year until beginning passenger operations in 1934.
Northwest Airlines was founded on September 1, 1926, by Colonel Lewis Brittin. Based in Minnesota, the name for the airline referred to the Northwest Territory, not it's early days as main carrier between the United States and the Orient. Northwest did rebrand itself to Northwest Orient Airlines in the 1950s but did not change its legal name from Northwest Airlines. They dropped "Orient" from their operating name and repainted aircraft after buying Republic Airlines in the late 1980s. That move created the three hub (Minneapolis, Memphis, and Republic's hub in Detroit) system that made them one of the nation's top airlines.
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