The only airline to order all widebody trijets was Delta Air Lines, founded in the early 1920s as Huff-Daland Dusters, which is now the world’s largest airline. Delta was one of the airlines which was negotiating with Lockheed and Douglas at the end of the 1960s, but although the airline operated all Douglas aircraft from the DC-2 to the DC-9 (except the DC-5), they chose the TriStar due to a far better offer from Lockheed.During the Rolls-Royce crisis in the early days of TriStar production, which caused a delay in aircraft delivery, Delta took an unexpected step and ordered five DC-10-10s to fill the gap between the planned and the new delivery dates of the TriStar. The aircraft were sold to United before delivery and leased back for three years from November 10th 1972 (when the first two aircraft, #59 and #64, arrived) until 1975. So Delta Air Lines became the first airline to operate all three widebody aircraft of the first generation at the same time.
In 1987, when Delta Air Lines took over Western Air Lines to expand on the US west coast, a fleet of nine DC-10s was inherited and operated until 1989, replaced by 767-300ERs. As a faithful Douglas costumers well into the last days of Mc Donnell - Douglas, it is curious that Delta didn’t build up a large DC-10 fleet. But in its own manner, Delta is was a very special DC-10 operator. The current fleet consists of 737-200/300/800, 757, 767, 777 and MD-80 aircraft.
Following aircraft were operated by or for Delta Air Lines:
