Northwest and Delta to Merge

Delta and Northwest are set to merge, if approved by regulators; they will keep the Delta name, thus ending the legacy of the Northwest name (1926-2008). You can read their spin on the merger here: Delta Northwest, and even see their combined effort at a site designed to present the merger in a positive light.

Turbulence Forecast has always been a proponent of Northwest Airlines for many reasons. First and foremost of interest to site visitors is their turbulence avoidance strategy, as seen in previous blog posts here: one, two, three, four.

Despite those blog posts, Delta never stood out to me one way or another in terms of avoidance. Since their respective route structures essentially do not overlap much at all, I never really had a chance to evaluate Delta very much in those aforementioned posts, but I will be watching next time the opportunity presents itself.

Delta did, and still may participate in a program related to turbulence, although the current status of that program is unknown and information is hard to come across. If anyone knows (Delta representatives especially encouraged to contact us), please post a comment or contact the site.

While I’m very familiar with Northwest’s web site for ticketing and other management features, a quick glance at Delta’s offering makes me hope that they retain Northwest’s ticketing system and self management features, as well as the features of the Elite program that Northwest offers.

Sadly, due to the raising cost of fuel, the merger was probably inevitable and it certainly makes sense just given their route structure, very little overlap. I hope that new Delta will maintain the best features of the old Northwest (large planes on many routes, and the points mentioned above) and turn the merger into a positive. Only time will tell.

It is Turbulence Forecast’s opinion that the merger will be permitted to go through. The retirement of the DC-9 fleet will probably accelerate due to fuel costs. The Northwest Airlines DC-9 fleet has an average age of 35 years, which is amazing if you think about it; they don’t build them like that anymore.

Links: Airliners.net thread, Flyertalk Delta thread, Flyertalk Northwest thread.

Written by tb_neg on April 14th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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