Delta Swot Case

Founded in 1924, Delta Airlines is one of the major airlines of USA, serving all continents except the Antarctica. The airline, along with its subsidiaries, operates more than 4000 flights every day. Delta Airlines is headquartered in Georgia, Atlanta with the largest hub in the world at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Since 1999, this airport has been recorded as the busiest airport based on the number of take offs and landings. The number of passengers flying from this airport exceeds 88 million annually. One of the founders of SkyTeam alliance, Delta Airlines took over Northwest Airlines, leading to the formation of the biggest worldwide airline in terms of passengers carried.

The airline is known to employ more than 80,000 employees. The CEO of the company is Richard H. Anderson while the President is Edward Bastian. SkyMiles is the frequent flyer program of Delta Airlines allowing its passengers to collect miles and enjoy privileges over them. The airline's lounge is known as Delta Sky Club.

The airline offers five travel classes to its passengers, namely Business Class, Domestic First Class, Economy Comfort Class, International Economy Class and Domestic Economy Class. Delta Airlines' BusinessElite class is available to passengers on the Boeing 777-200ER, 777-200LR, 767-400ER, 767-300ER aircrafts as well as some selected 757-200 jets . The Business Elite passengers receive free meals, amenity kits and alcoholic beverages. The cabins are also equipped with folding tables, a moveable reading light, universal power ports and on-demand entertainment programs. Boeing 767-300 ER features seats with 160 degree of recline, 18.5 inches width and 60 inches pitch.

Strengths

Delta Air Lines serves more than 160 million customers each year. During the past year, Delta was named domestic "Airline of the Year" by the readers of Travel Weekly magazine, was named the "Top Tech-Friendly U.S. Airline" by PC World magazine for its innovation in technology, won the Business Travel News Annual Airline Survey and was the recipient of 12 Executive Travel Magazine Leading Edge awards for U.S. airlines.

With an industry-leading global network, Delta and the Delta Connection carriers offer service to over 320 destinations in 60 countries on six continents. 103 of these destinations are international and 228 are domestic. Headquartered in Atlanta, Delta employs 80,000 employees worldwide and operates a mainline fleet of more than 700 aircraft.

In 2000 Delta became a founding member of the Sky Team global alliance, Delta participates in the industry's leading trans-Atlantic joint venture with Air France-KLM and Alitalia. Including its worldwide alliance partners, Delta offers customers more than 13,000 daily flights, with hubs in Amsterdam, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Memphis, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York-LaGuardia, New York-JFK, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Salt Lake City and Tokyo-Narita. The airline's service includes the SkyMiles frequent flier program, a world-class airline loyalty program that was established in 1981 and has more than 74 million members; the award-winning Business Elite service; and more than 50 Delta Sky Clubs in airports worldwide.

Delta also has great employee benefits such as worldwide travel privileges, flexible spending accounts - dependent day care and health care, adoption reimbursement and full service credit union. In the past Delta offered educational assistance reimbursement but now has a scholarship fund for employees or their dependents. Delta has a care team which provides assistance to families in need and an employee care fund for up to $5000.00 if a family falls into hardship. The company also offers a way for their employees to stay fit and healthy by having free fitness centers and nutritionist. Delta also tries to keep momentum up by throwing annual block parties with food and drinks for the employees and up to five friends or family members.

Delta is investing more than $3 billion through 2013 in airport facilities and global products, services and technology to enhance the customer experience in the air and on the ground. As of today customers can check in for flights, print boarding passes, check bags and review flight status at delta.com.

Weaknesses

Delta Airlines is a very successful organization with very good track record in the airline industry. Although the company thrives in its industry, there are always ways to improve the overall productivity and wellness of the business. A couple weaknesses of Delta Airlines include high airfare prices and high debt obligations.

The goal of any company is to bring in as much revenue as possible, but not at the expense of losing customers. High airfare prices are a problem at Delta Airlines. The airfare prices in Memphis has led to the start of a Facebook group called "Delta does Memphis", which allows people to express their displeasures with outrageous airfare prices. Delta's response was that "Government fare figures are averages from a 10 % sample fare data, and don't always reflect the best available fare on any given route." Delta says this, but reporters in the Tennessee area have covered recent stories of businesses and conventions leaving town because of the airfare prices. The mayor and other city leaders have asked the Memphis airport authority to pursue other carriers. The Facebook group was started in May 2012 and currently has 5,829 members.

Delta is the most profitable airline known to date, but in the same breath, the company a very high debt obligations. The concentration of Delta's debt is in their fuel costs, long-term liabilities, and their pension and post-retirement obligation which seems to be a big issue with retirees of the company. According to H.J. Honeycutt, an investment researcher, Delta's liabilities/ total capital is 125.7%, which is higher than any other airline in the industry. These high debt obligations make investing in Delta Airlines an extremely high financial rise.

Grand Strategies of Delta

The purpose of a growth strategy is to increase profits, revenues, market share, or the number of locations in which the company does business. Companies can grow externally by merging with or acquiring other companies in the same or different businesses. Delta has clearly emphasized its growth strategy effectively by maximizing its profits into record breaking numbers and expanding to over 500 nations worldwide.

On April 14, 2008, both Delta and Northwest Airlines announced that they would merge to create the world's largest airline company and it would be under the Delta