This July 4th is a special one Delta! We celebrate 75 years of carrying the mail by air. On  July 4, 1934, 7-passenger Stinson T planes took off to fly Air Mail Route 24, between Fort Worth, Texas, and Charleston, South Carolina.

Here is the one piece of commemorative mail from that day, now housed in the Delta Archives:

Winning an air mail contract made possible Delta’s real transition from crop duster to passenger-carrying airline.  With the revenue from the mail, we soon started up passenger service again, which had been suspended since 1930, and grew into a national airline.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Marie Force
Archives Manager

Hundreds of employees and retirees celebrated Delta’s 80th anniversary yesterday at the Delta Air Transport Heritage Museum. We opened a new, major exhibit titled “Delta Takes Off – From Crop Dusting to Jets.” The exhibit highlights Delta’s history from the 1920s to the Jet Age, featuring our progression from crop duster to global airline.

Three galleries hold colorful ads, rare photos and artifacts, including a 1950s flight attendant uniform, 1920s crop duster parts, and onboard meal service items. See model airplanes flying overhead. Sit in a replica of our first passenger seat:  no seat belt required then–or now!

Come help us celebrate 80 years of Delta service. For information on touring the new exhibit and our historic aircraft, see the Delta Air Transport Heritage Museum website.

Marie Force
Archives Manager

To celebrate 80 years of passenger service on June 17th, we are sharing stories from the people who launched Delta and from their families about those early days.

Delta has unusual beginnings for a major airline:  we started out as a crop-dusting company, then added passenger and mail services.  Former dusting pilot, Jim St. Julien (pictured below in a Stearman plane in the 1950s), recalls the skills needed for that type of flying.

“Now, Delta had about – I’m going to say about 15 dusters and sprayer aircraft. And we also had one that had two seats, which is the same way the Army used them in training. And we would use this whenever a fresh pilot would come up and wanting to fly for Delta. He had to have a check out, and so they would check him out, and if he was proficient and could stand the ride of flying low and then a hellacious pull up and coming back to the field, if he could do that sufficiently, well, Delta hired him.

And it might be amusing to say that back in the ‘50s, every once in a while Delta would furlough some of the passenger pilots. And they’d come to Monroe to work at the dusting division. Well, every few of the big iron captains who flew big airplanes could fly the little Spearman proficiently. And I know out of maybe some 15 or 20 that would show up, one was hired out of the group. But it was strictly being able to fly low, and a guy had to have a little experience before flying and dusting or spraying.”

By the way, when Delta started passenger service in 1929, we promoted our “Pilots of Unusual Skills” to encourage travel by air:  “The operation of cotton-dusting planes requires a high degree of skill on the part of the pilots. The planes fly only a few feet above the ground, scarcely higher than a man’s head, and at a speed of about 100 miles per hour. . . The most experienced of these seasoned men are now at the controls of Delta transport planes.”

Read earlier stories: 1940s In Flight Service, Flying Prop Planes, 1930s Customer Service; How Delta Became “Delta”.

Marie Force
Archives Manager