Gift Jet

Saying thanks with a 767

Delta Airlines has long had a deserved reputation for maintaining unusually good relations with its employees. Now the line's largely nonunionized staff of 37,000 is showing its gratitude with a help-the-company gesture so generous that even Delta's corporate management has been left speechless.

In appreciation for an 8% September pay raise, as well as for the company's refusal to lay off workers despite an $18 million operating loss in the first quarter of 1982, Delta employees have begun chipping in to buy the airline a new Boeing 767 for about $30 million. Explains Flight Attendant Jean Owens of Atlanta: "We know what a hard time the airlines have been having, and we just wanted to say thanks for the way Delta has treated us."

Help in paying for 20 new 767s, first ordered nearly four years ago for delivery beginning in December, is exactly what Delta needs. As with many other airlines that have also ordered the new aircraft, soaring interest rates have driven up projected financing costs even as revenues have been plunging. Thus the proposal, which would in effect make one of the first planes delivered an employee-sponsored gift, was gratefully accepted by Delta's management.

Delta helped the drive indirectly by providing fund raisers with a room, some desks, and the use of its teletype equipment for soliciting efforts in behalf of "Project 767." Last week each Delta employee's pay envelope included a pledge card asking for a voluntary salary deduction over the next six to twelve months. Although delivery date for the first new 767 is little more than four paydays away, few Delta employees doubt that the drive will eventually net the $30 million.

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