Richard Anderson, CEO of the world’s biggest airline in terms of fleet size, is more focused on reliable aircraft performance than fuel economy, and more on flight frequency than aircraft size.
During a visit to Seattle this week to lecture on leadership at the University of Washington Foster School of Business, Delta Air Lines CEO Anderson offered some surprises as he took a few minutes to share his views on aircraft acquisition and fleet management.
We were very early in the queue,” Anderson said during a Jan. 8 conversation at Seattle’s Four Seasons Hotel. “I shook hands with (former Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO) Alan Mulally on that airplane in 2003. We had dinner and decided the 787 was for us.”
But since then, Anderson has actually pushed Delta’s delivery dates for the 787 back until 2020 and is holding off entirely on ordering any more, or any of the Airbus competitor, the A350.
“We need to have some certainty about delivery schedule. So instead we made an investment in our existing fleet, put interiors in the existing fleet,” he said. ‘We need to see the 787 and A350 be successful ...We need certainty about when airplanes are going to come.”
Anderson added that Delta is carefully watching Boeing’s (NYSE: BA) plan to raise 787 production to 10 monthly by the end of the 2013, as well as its work to create a larger model, the 787-9.
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