Delta goes Airbus

[ozzy72]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30141666
I was a little surprised by this!

[Hawkeye07]

It's not a total surprise though. As the article mentioned the B787 is having it's share of teething problems and I'm sure Delta doesn't want to sit around and wait to see what happens. Here's a little background I pulled out of Wiki which is pretty informative:

As of August 2014, the average age of the Delta fleet is 16.9 years; excluding grounded aircraft and those operated by contract carriers. The oldest aircraft in the fleet are the McDonnell Douglas MD-88s averaging 24 years. Delta operates the largest fleets of the Boeing 717, the Boeing 757, the Boeing 767, and the McDonnell Douglas MD-90 of any operators worldwide. Two of Delta’s MD-90s were assembled at Jiangwan Airfield in Shanghai.
In early 2011, Delta began to discuss narrowbody replacement plans for the DC-9s, MD-88s, older A320 and 757-200 aircraft with manufacturers Airbus, Boeing and Bombardier. On August 25, 2011, Delta ordered 100 Boeing 737-900ER aircraft for delivery between 2013 and 2018 as it retires older mainline jets and upgrades its fleet. The new aircraft are intended to improve the company's profitability. On May 22, 2012, Delta agreed to sublease 88 AirTran Boeing 717 aircraft from Southwest Airlines. Delta began refurbishing all domestic and two class regional jets with Economy Comfort seats in 2012. All international aircraft already received Economy Comfort in 2011.
On September 4, 2013, Delta ordered 10 Airbus A330-300 HGW for fleet expansion and 30 A321s. On June 2, 2014, Delta ordered an additional 15 A321 aircraft.
Delta Air Lines officially retired its DC-9s from mainline services on January 6, 2014, but were used on a needed basis until January 22.
On November 20, 2014, Delta ordered replacements for its Boeing 747-400 and 767-300ER jets. The 50-jet order was split between 25 Airbus A330-900neos and 25 Airbus A350-900s.

Another item to keep in mind is that Delta also inherited NWA's fleet in the 2010 merger which contained A320's and A-330's and a quite a few DC-9's which were getting pretty old. Not to mention the B747-200's and -400's which were also starting to show their age. One of the big promoters of the Airbus aircraft at NWA was the Tech Ops (Maintenance Operations) Vice President Richard Anderson who later became the CEO of NWA for a while and is now Delta's CEO.
The part of the article that surprised me was the engine selection. I don't think Delta has any aircraft with Rolls Royce engines right now. But it sounds like Rolls gave them a deal they couldn't refuse.


Hawkeye