Delta lost and found1/5/2024 ![]() While I understand the need for context around a situation, I felt the authors spent too much time on items like the history of Alaskan Airlines as it pertained to the storyline with Delta. Sometimes the background information included was unnecessary and diminished the overall story about Delta. Other aspects of their writing also bogged down the fluidity of the read, such as the sometimes-disjointed themes within and between the chapters. Among these, the phrase "to be sure," was used way too much. Many expressions were used excessively and detracted from the reading of the book. None of the other legacy airlines offer anything better but the fact is, Delta is clearly run for its own convenience, and the next time there's some sort of crisis - and there will be, it's endemic to airlines - Delta is going to fall harder and faster than the others due to its focus on profits rather than its customers.Įxtremely informative, but read more like a textbook than a novel. ![]() ![]() I read this aboard six Delta flights on ancient cramped 757s - four in first class domestically and two in Delta's God-awful new Premium Select class which is offered in lieu of Delta One on select international flights. Delta's biggest ideas, apparently, were to A) starting using long haul planes it had been flying around the US, where people weren't flying, to Europe and to B) DO NOTHING about the airline's geriatric fleet but redo the interiors and avoid investing in state of the art aircraft, a strategy that is going to turn around and bite them one of these days. It reads like one extremely long press release. Yes, it's wonderful that Grinstein, Anderson, Bastian, et al engineered an amazing turnaround - that is why I wanted to read it - but there are simply too many references to their brilliance and business acumen to believe that this book wasn't paid for by Delta. Despite their contention at the end of the book that it was written independently, I had the impression it was commissioned by Delta management. I had the impression the authors simply got out every past issue of airline trade journals, picked up whatever was said about Delta, and put the news clips in chronological order, separated by news about what was going on in the world at the time for context, then repeated what they had written in the next chapter on the assumption readers would be unable to remember what they had read. And while redefining itself, Delta also redefined an industry. Delta did the unimaginable by simultaneously resurrecting its finances and the spirits of its employees and customers. It’s a profile in leadership: Delta became not only the greatest turnaround story in its own industry but also one of the greatest in the history of corporate America. This independent work of journalism, not approved or endorsed by the airline, stems from a decade of research and countless interviews by Airline Weekly ’s Seth Kaplan and Jay Shabat. Glory Lost and Found: How Delta Climbed from Despair to Dominance in the Post-9/11 Era tells the story of Delta’s dramatic tumble into bankruptcy and how it climbed its way back to pre-eminence despite hurricane-force headwinds: high fuel prices, a hostile takeover bid, relentless competition, economic meltdowns and geopolitical shocks. Few believed it could ever reclaim its perch atop the US airline industry.īut it did. On this day, Delta found itself surrounded by lawyers, dejectedly filing for bankruptcy. ![]() Delta Air Lines, on September 14, 2005, was nothing like the world-beating company it had been just five years earlier, let alone decades before that. Its reputation was now as tattered as the interiors of its airplanes. “When the history book is written on the restructuring of this industry, Delta will be the greatest turnaround story in it.” -Delta CEO Gerald Grinstein, December 19, 2006
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