Ask the pilot

It's nonstop to Africa for the first time in 15 years. Why should we care?

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Africa, Business, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot

Dec. 8, 2006 | In Atlanta on Monday afternoon, Dec. 4, the scene at Gate E12 was pandemonium. There was barely room to move amid a crush of elbows and carry-ons, and it was tough to hear the announcements above the din. It was noisy, frantic and disorganized.

Isn't that always the case? Except this time, for most of the people on hand, it was downright exciting, even joyous. For this wasn't your typical pre-departure chaos, it was launch day for Flight 34, Delta Air Lines' new nonstop service between Atlanta and Africa.

The gate had been decked out with balloons, ribbons and banners. A makeshift podium was flanked by Senegalese and South African flags. Television cameras craned above the crowd. There was live music, a free buffet and cocktails, and performances by the Zulu Dancers. Some carved-wood figurines -- giraffes and elephants -- were assembled on the check-in kiosk. Delta had the look and feel just right, colorful and apropos, with no slip into caricature. How to say this, exactly, but the choice of cultural props for this sort of thing isn't always appreciated. Dragging out a cardboard windmill to herald a new run to Amsterdam might be clichéd, but it's a safe, inoffensive cliché. Africa is owed more careful forethought.

The Delta brass were beaming as they introduced a short series of speakers, including staff from the Washington embassies of Senegal and South Africa and the director of the South Africa tourism board. And it wouldn't be an inaugural without a ribbon-cutting (complete with a pair of oversize novelty scissors that had more than one observer cracking jokes that the Transportation Security Administration screeners had missed them).

Flashbulbs popped as Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin took the podium. Franklin wasn't there merely for the cameras; she clutched a boarding pass for Johannesburg, South Africa. Franklin told the story of her first trip to Africa some 40 years ago. "On Pan Am," she added emphatically, drawing scattered applause.

As the crowd was informed earlier, today's departure -- commencement of a daily service to Dakar, Senegal, and onward to JoBurg -- would be more than a first for Delta, it would be the first regularly scheduled flight to Africa by a major U.S. airline in more than 15 years. The last to operate such a flight: the fabled Pan American.

Two qualifiers here: The first is that I'm referencing scheduled network passenger carriers -- the so-called majors. At least one small niche company, the little-known North American Airlines, has been running flights from New York to Ghana and Nigeria for a while now. The second qualifier is that by "Africa" I mean the continent proper. That is, black Africa. TWA and Delta were calling at Cairo, Egypt, until 2001, but nobody has ventured sub-Sahara since Pan Am. (Its routes there had grown from government contracts commissioned during World War II. I'm sure today you can stumble across examples of Pan Am's famous blue globe -- faded, peeling and streaked with rust -- on abandoned trucks and ground equipment in Monrovia, Abidjan, Nairobi and elsewhere.)

In Atlanta, however, the Pan Am references, albeit reverent, would need to be kept to a minimum. For all its global adventuring and aerohistorical superlatives, what disgraces Pan Am's legacy is that, when push came to shove in the post-deregulation era, it couldn't get its act together. The most storied franchise in the history of civil aviation closed its doors for good in December 1991.

Or, to be more eerily precise, it closed its doors for good on Dec. 4, 1991 -- 15 years ago to the very day. I don't know how many of those on hand, if anyone, knew that, but it's not a karma any earnest airline, particularly one looking to emerge from bankruptcy while fending off a hostile takeover bid, wants to become too cozy with.

Be that as it may, wishful disassociation only goes so far. After all, it was Delta that purchased Pan Am's massive transatlantic and intra-European networks in 1990. In a proverbial heartbeat, the once parochial carrier from Monroe, La. -- hence "Delta," from that of the river Mississippi -- was flying to places like India and Russia, and was suddenly running a hub (since closed) in Frankfurt, Germany. In the process, the Southerners may have inherited a little of Juan Trippe's globetrotting DNA -- he the visionary founder of Pan Am, who would scope out new destinations using a giant model globe that stood in his office. They were, at the outset, in over their heads, but by 2006, a glance at the Delta route map shows what is arguably the most impressive overseas network of any U.S. contender. Ignoring Dakar and Johannesburg for a moment, the capstone of that network is probably the JFK-Mumbai nonstop introduced last month, the only direct flight -- and at 6,777 nautical miles one of the longest in the world -- between America and India's largest city. Delta has greatly intensified its South American presence -- up to nine cities in seven countries -- and while it won't be a milestone event like Flight 34, service from JFK to Accra, Ghana, starts on Dec. 11. (Freight will be major factor, and potential profit maker, on that one.)

Across the Atlantic, Delta has more flights than anybody, and by next summer, with the pending additions of Prague, Bucharest, Pisa (gateway to Florence), Vienna and Dubai, that'll mean 400 weekly flights to 36 cities in Europe, India, Africa, the Middle East and beyond. Several of those markets will be Delta exclusives. It's the only American airline currently flying, or soon to be flying, to Greece, Turkey, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, the United Arab Emirates -- and, of course, Senegal, South Africa and Ghana. (Of the latter, by the way, my hunch is that Senegal disappears once Delta takes delivery of the on-order, long-range 777-LRs it needs to make Johannesburg a nonstop.)

Granted, cutthroat competition on the domestic front has forced all of the network carriers to go looking offshore for profits, but it's Delta that has made the most rapid and impressive strides. Originally hoping to secure 25 percent of revenues from international flying, putting it roughly on a par with American and United, the new target is 35 percent, and possibly higher. "Forty isn't out of the question," said Andy McDill, a Delta spokesman on hand for Monday's launch. "Even closer to 45." I asked McDill how it feels being the first back to Africa, reminding him that Continental had seen its 2005 plans for Nigeria dashed over governmental squabbling. "We're very proud, naturally," he replied. "And we're proud to be doing it from here, our world headquarters. But we won't be stopping with this."

Next page: Which airline will be the first since Pan Am to join the Six Continent Club?