Ask the pilot

Ah, the airline amenities of yesteryear. Where did they go?

By Patrick Smith

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March 10, 2006 | There's stirring news afoot courtesy of Delta Air Lines. On several occasions since this column's inception, I've lamented the surprising fact that no U.S. passenger carrier offers scheduled service to any destination in Africa. Beginning in December, Delta intends to change that, inaugurating daily flights between its Atlanta superhub and Johannesburg, South Africa.

Don't uncork the champagne just yet. December is a long way off, and we've already been through one false start. Last spring, Continental Airlines nixed its plans to commence flying between Newark and Nigeria only a few months prior to launch. Continental called the decision a postponement, but has yet to reveal a new timetable.

Atlanta-Joburg covers a whopping 7,334 nautical miles in each direction. (On a list of the world's longest flights, as they exist today, it would place fourth.) That's slightly beyond the capabilities of Delta's longest-range aircraft, the Boeing 777 -- Johannesburg's elevation is another complication -- and the airline has chosen Dakar, Senegal, as a stopover point. In a code-share arrangement with Delta, South African Airways has been operating ATL-DKR-JNB for some time, using the Airbus A340-600.

In a way, Delta picks up where it left off in late 2001, when it abandoned a short-lived route to Cairo, the last African city served by any U.S. major. (Cairo had been a TWA city as well, for 56 years, eliminated after that carrier's acquisition by American Airlines.) By adding both South Africa and Senegal, Delta will open two very different African markets simultaneously, and it will be the first U.S. player to offer flights beyond the continent's northern fringe since Pan Am gave up its sub-Saharan wanderings -- to Monrovia, Freetown, Abidjan, Nairobi, etc. -- more than 15 years ago.

Branching into Africa is part of an ongoing and aggressive Delta campaign to widen its international network. It hopes to secure up to 35 percent of its revenue from overseas markets, on a par with, or in some cases exceeding, the percentages generated by American, United, Northwest and Continental. As of right now, Delta ranks fifth among the so-called Big Five in international RPKs (revenue passenger-kilometers), even as it carries more total passengers than anybody else except American. All five have been energized to increase business abroad -- anything to get away from the relentless competition with low-cost airlines in the domestic arena -- but Delta's expansion is perhaps the most ambitious. San Salvador, Managua, Chennai and Rio de Janeiro are among recent additions to the route map, with Tel Aviv, Kiev, Budapest, Quito, Guayaquil and Copenhagen on tap this spring. According to a company press release, 50 international routes have been added or announced in the past year alone.

(Now, if only it would return to Dubai, a city it let go, along with Cairo, back in '01, and become -- again -- the only U.S. airline flying to an Arab country. The market seems to be there: Emirates has two Dubai-New York nonstops every day.)

With the 2008 summer Olympics in mind, an Atlanta-Beijing pairing is under evaluation, as are routes to other Asian cities. Flights to Asia are subject to government approval (to say nothing of company survival, which we'll get to in a minute), and for now Delta is a comparative lightweight in that part of the world. It once flew to Seoul, Taipei and Bangkok, but today there's only a once-a-day nonstop from Atlanta to Tokyo. New entrants in this realm have their work cut out for them against Northwest and United, who have hundreds of weekly flights across the Pacific, as well as dozens of intra-Asian routes staged through Tokyo-Narita. And for Delta to be taken seriously in the Far East would require something else: the right aircraft. With a token number of 777s currently on its roster, most of them deployed on busy European routes, there isn't much aluminum to work with. The 767, backbone of the carrier's international fleet, lacks the range and capacity to be a viable contender in a market where average flight times are 12-14 hours. Here, 747s, 777s and A340s reign supreme.

While Asia remains a question mark, Delta has a massive and growing presence across that other, somewhat less challenging ocean. I'm old enough to remember the late 1970s, when London and Paris were the airline's most exotic ports of call. Things have certainly changed. By this summer, Delta will offer more flights between the United States and Europe than anybody else, domestic or foreign. What jump-started all of this overseas venturing was the 1990 purchase of almost the entire transatlantic and intra-Europe network of the dying Pan Am, including its hub at Frankfurt. Virtually overnight, this once parochial airline of the American deep South -- founded in 1928, it takes its name from the mouth of the Mississippi River -- became a dominant force over the North Atlantic. In 1987, Delta had merged with the smaller Western Airlines, giving it a stronger, left-of-the-Mississippi presence at home (its Salt Lake City hub is a vestige of Western). Together, those two moves helped position Delta to be what it is today -- one of the world's largest airlines.

Second largest, to be precise, going by the most recent numbers put out by Air Transport World. Whether measured by RPKs or total passengers, the standard gauges of air carrier size, Delta has leapfrogged United to take first-runner-up honors, bested only by the seemingly insurmountable girth of American Airlines. Delta isn't the biggest, but it's very, very big.

And, unfortunately, bankrupt. By 2004 Delta was measuring quarterly losses in the billions, and a Chapter 11 filing came last September (joined by Northwest on the same day). Between October and January, it posted another $1.5 billion hit, wrapping up a year in which losses totaled $3.8 billion.

The industry in whole faces some dangerous uncertainties, and all of the Big Five majors have been walloped by soaring fuel costs and intense pressure from low-cost rivals. But Delta finds itself in a maddening predicament: Although it has the lowest operating costs per seat-mile -- CASMs, a term we looked at last week -- of any of the Big Five, including the lowest labor costs, it also brings in the lowest amount of revenue per mile. Delta's CASMs are a full penny better than the next closest major--- which is fairly remarkable -- with almost nothing to show for it. The airline seems to be doing most of the right things to reduce its bills, but it can't catch a break. Perhaps the biggest reason is Delta's heavy presence in lower-yield tourist markets, especially those between the Northeast and Florida. And talk about a thorn in your side: Atlanta and New York, arguably the carrier's most important hubs, are the home cities for two of the most successful low-cost carriers, AirTran and JetBlue. Another cause is that smaller share of international traffic. Management's transformation plan calls for downsizing the north-south snowbird shuttles and, as we've already seen, going gangbusters overseas.

The strictures of Chapter 11 have a strange way of caressing financially renegade carriers into lean, mean, successful ones. But there will be no flights to Johannesburg, or anywhere else, if the mess isn't fixed. That includes smoothing out a hot and heavy conflict between management and pilots. Crews have been holding informational picketing sessions at airports around the country in response to stalled negotiations. Despite having already given up heavy concessions, the pilots face the possibility of having their entire working agreement nullified. The result, many believe, would be a strike. It's a game of mutually assured destruction similar to the one played out recently at Northwest, where a tentative agreement was finally struck last week.

Next page: Delta's lost triangle