Delta Air Lines has improved its fuel efficiency and reduced costs through enhancements to its value chain, including inbound logistics, operations, maintenance, and marketing. Key strategies have included a new crew scheduling system, partnerships to offer airport lounges to premium customers, and considering purchasing an oil refinery to secure fuel supplies and save on costs. Delta also focuses on customer service through training programs and agents to assist passengers.

1. · Value Chain Analysis
Delta Air Lines has increased aircraft fuel efficiency 35
percent since 2000 through improvements in inbound logistics
technology, operating procedures, distribution, marketing and
maintenance. As a strategic component of any business that the
value chain is considered as the most important parts for
companies, and Delta Airline is continuity looking for ways to
improve its performance and minimize its costs, and deliver
high quality and excellent customer service customers (Inbound
logistics, 2011).
· Inbound Logistics (Supply Chain Management)
The first in the value chain management is the inbound
logistics, where its core responsibilities are to handle the
Transportation, Material handling, Storage, Communicating,
Testing, and information systems.Compare to others, crew
supple chain management is extremely important in the airline
industry.Delta Airlines manage the supply chain as an
integrated supply chain, using a new crew scheduling system
that was based on the multinomial time linear programming
arithmetic (AGIFORS, 2007).
Generically, a supply chain is the movement of production
materials from their source to the end product. Crew supply
chains have numerous inputs, many processes, which include
network planning/scheduling, manpower planning, recruiting,
training, crew scheduling and crew tracking, and also involved
several organizational owners. Its time from materials in to end
product can be a year or longer. Each process is optimized as an
isolated and independent. However, there are many problems to
make the crew-resourcing department to have a good handle on
their procedure, and flight operations made close-in changes to
crew work rules. Because of these sudden and uncoordinated
actions, a crew shortage materialized overnight, or even with a
lead-time of seven to eight months to recruit, train, and on-
board new pilots, the airline was stuck (Wyman, O., 2011).

2. Afterwards, Delta Air Lines apply fleet management to
give a clear schedule that lists the time, origin, and destination
of all flights, and these fleet engineering services are available
for variable aircraft. The operational experience gained from
maintaining not only put the power behind the world’s largest
fleet to work for the maintenance requirements, the program can
also:
· Integrate all components of the maintenance program
· Maximize and ensure the efficiency of the maintenance spend
· Reduce administrative overhead and speed up response time
· Leverage unprecedented economies of scale and unparalleled
global reach
· Streamline communications with a dedicated point of contact
· Take advantage of industry-leading operational commitments
Moreover, effectively manages the companies rotating assets,
such as spare parts, interchangeable components and more
(Delta TechOps, 2012).
· Operations
Delta Air Lines is providing a large variety of service to
its passengers and using the most innovative operation
stratagem than others. Delta Air Lines is constantly looking for
ways to bring value to its customers, including value for those
that pay a premium through its demand chain. One way the
company has achieved this is through partnerships with other
companies that offer services to travelers. According to the
Breaking Travel News, No.1 Traveller is a European service
that offers “super lounges” that include extra comforts to
travelers through membership fees. These comforts include a
travel spa, mini-cinema, private meeting rooms and conference
facilities, free Wi-Fi, game rooms, bistro with drinks at no extra
cost, and even chauffeur services. In 2011, Delta signed a
partnership with No.1 Traveller to offer these comforts to its
Business Elite and Medallion customers (Breaking Travel News,
2011). Delta Air Lines has tried the best to deliver the high
quality and excellent customer service to their customers.
On the other hand, Delta spent $11.7 billion in 2011 on aviation

3. fuel, roughly 36 percent of the airline’s operating costs. That
certainly qualifies fuel cost as Delta’s key value-chain lever for
margin improvement. Delta also has a good concentration of its
operating hubs located in the U.S. east coast region, where fuel
costs typically are higher than other regions of the U.S.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Delta talks with Conoco
Phillips regarding the idled Trainer Pennsylvania refinery are
reported to be in a price range of $100 to $150 million, the
equivalent of a new wide bodied aircraft. Estimates are that if
successful, Delta could save $20 to $25 per barrel on some of
its aviation fuel costs by configuring the refinery for optimized
aviation production while support existing buyers for other fuel
products. Delta would also seek an experienced operator to
manage refinery operations.
The WSJ indicted that whether or not this acquisition ever
comes to fruition, this might be the first airline that has ever
considered owning a refinery. Delta has said that its new
refinery will enable it to cut down fuel spending by $300
million and ensure the availability of jet fuel in the northeast.
Production from the refinery, combined with the agreements
with Phillips 66 and BP, will be able to provide 80% of Delta’s
jet fuel demand in the US. Process innovation can come from
external or internal forces and bold thinking has been the basis
of many supply chain capability breakthroughs. (Carey, S., &
Gonzalez, A., 2012).
Because of the fuel cost savings Delta projects it will
enjoy by owning an oil refinery, some industry experts assert
that the company will be able to gain a leg up against its
competitors in the east coast market.
· Outbound Logistics
Delta Air Lines main customers are those wishing to travel
by air from one location to another. These passengers include
both business and leisure travelers that need to fly to any of its
341 destinations. Delta’s secondary customers are those in need
of transporting cargo by air around the world. Through its
global network of routes, Delta has a presence in every major

4. domestic and international market that centers on a hub system.
Delta also has partnerships with several international airline
companies to expand its destinations to 578 in 119 different
countries. With a fleet of more than 700 aircraft of different
sizes, Delta has the flexibility to adjust any aircraft to its global
network. This allows it to fill the air transportation needs and
wants for both passengers and cargo partnerships (Delta Air
Lines, 2011).
In order for a customer to enjoy the products or services
provided by a company, the company must deliver those
products or services to its customers. Over the years, Delta has
worked to deliver its services to all its customers. One way to
help with this delivery is through Delta's 341 destinations and
578 destinations with its worldwide partners. By providing all
these destinations, Delta is able to provide its more than 160
million annual customers with more convenient locations to
travel (Delta, 2011).
· Marketing and Sales
As part of the multibillion-quality improvement program,
Delta is focusing significant attention on the training of its
customer facing staff. The enhanced training programs and
seminars are being targeted to the roughly 11,000 Delta
passenger service agents and supervisors who are the day-to-day
face of the airline to the travelling public. It has been over a
decade since Delta undertook such a large-scale training effort,
and the renewed focus on service standards comes in light of
Delta’s poor customer satisfaction scores in industry surveys in
recent years.
Everything comes to the one who waits, nowadays, Delta
Air Lines become the world's No. 1 airline company, serving
more than 400 locations worldwide; also, Delta is the first
airline to launch mobile bag tracking capabilities via its Delta
app for smartphones, allowing passengers to track the checked
baggage in real time. The airline also quietly introduced a
premium service in partnership with the German automaker
Porsche at its Atlanta hub for its highest tier Diamond

5. Medallion customers. Selected arriving passengers are delivered
from the plane to a waiting Porsche luxury vehicle for a ride to
their cars in the parking lot or another terminal for a connecting
flight. Porsche has provided the vehicles to Delta free of
charge, but has placed information about the car models in the
vehicles and in Delta Sky Lounges at the airport (Tsirulnik, G.,
2009).
· After-Sales Service
Responding to passenger feedback for a more personal
touch on the ground, Delta has already revived its ‘Red Coats’
service agents. In their role as a super passenger service agent,
the ‘Red Coats’ primary mission is to fix customer problems.
Easy to spot in busy airports thanks to their trademark red
blazers, the Delta Red Coats carry hand held computers that
allow them to handle an array of issues on the spot, such as
helping customers make flight connections, issuing new
boarding passes or providing food vouchers when necessary.
Over 800 agents are currently deployed airside at airports across
the US, as well as at Delta’s Asian hub at Tokyo Narita.
Expanding on its customer service footprint in the social
networking space, Delta became the first airline to offer
dedicated customer support via Facebook, as it brought the
‘Delta Assist’ Twitter service to the social network in March
2011, providing real-time travel assistance. To better serve its
Spanish language customers, it also launched the Twitter
channel in the fall of 2011(Airlinetrends, 2011). For the final
project, add the support activities.