Timeline
Through the Decades
Explore Delta's history and achievements and discover how the airline went from dusting crops to serving over 320 destinations on six continents.
Choose a decade:
1960s - Delta enters the computer and jet age
1960 First airline to launch Convair 880 jet service. Opens Jet Base in Atlanta, today's Technical Operations Center (TOC), for aircraft maintenance and overhaul that has the largest doors (open area) of any similar structure in the United States.
1961 Flies first nonstop service from Atlanta to Los Angeles. Delta links California and the Caribbean with first jet service from California to Montego Bay and Caracas. Receives National Safety Award for flying more than 11 billion passenger miles without a fatality.
1962 Delta modifies cabin configurations to offer both First Class and Economy Class on all its four-engine aircraft. A Delta DC-8 is the first commercial plane to fly Los Angeles-Atlanta in less than 3 hours (02:57:11).
1964 Deltamatic SABRE Electronic Reservations activates for "instant" computerized flight reservations.
The initial system consists of about 350 Deltamatic SABRE sets in use by reservations agents at Reservations Control in Atlanta and 24 offices across the U.S., serving customers in nearly 60 cities on the Delta system. Between these "res centers" and two large IBM 7074 computers at Delta's SABRE Center in Atlanta, a "high-speed communications network" processed and stored reservations using two IBM 1401 computer systems, two IBM 7750 communications computers, 23 magnetic tape drives, three magnetic drums and five disk files.
Unlike other airline computerized reservations systems at the time, Deltamatic could handle alphabetic information as well as numeric information, meaning no paper records were required to support Deltamatic at the reservations centers and all records could be processed and stored electronically in the Atlanta SABRE Center. Deltamatic was also faster, performing five times a many functions as any other reservations computer system.
1965 Delta is first airline to launch Douglas DC-9 service.
1966 Delta founder C.E. Woolman dies. Charles H. Dolson becomes Delta's second CEO. Patricia Murphy is Delta’s first African American flight attendant. Crop-dusting division ceases operations. Delta is first with Lockheed L-100 Hercules all-cargo planes.
1968 Sam Graddy is Delta’s first African American pilot. A reconditioned 1925 Huff Daland Duster is donated to the Smithsonian Institution as a memorial to founder C.E. Woolman. Delta adopts standard paint scheme for its aircraft fleet—the classic "widget" branded livery.
1969 Enclosed baggage carts with shelves and side curtains to protect luggage now in use.