Originally posted by dis sjw
i think song airlines is taking over delta express.
They're not taking over Delta Express... Delta spent over $65m in order to make it a seperate brand entity.
http://www.orlandosentinal.com/business/orl-subizsongair13041303apr13.story
Check that out for full story with pictures and whatnot.
Delta's new tune
By Todd Pack | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted April 13, 2003
Song, Delta Air Lines' second crack at winning back bargain-minded travelers from the likes of AirTran, JetBlue and Southwest, takes to the skies Tuesday.
It will fly only one route the first few weeks -- New York-West Palm Beach -- but will quickly expand to include service to Orlando and other Florida vacation spots.
It will begin flying west to Las Vegas from Fort Lauderdale later this summer.
Delta sees the brand as a stylish alternative to the other discounters. Its planes will be brightly colored outside and in.
It promises gourmet snacks, a little extra legroom and, by fall, live television and a virtual jukebox with hundreds of songs in every seat.
But until five days ago, one week before its debut, Song was an unfinished symphony.
Delta had planned to finish work on Song's first airplane on April 2, but progress was slowed by some minor gaffes -- misaligned floor panels and such -- that together put the airline about a week behind schedule.
Delta's plan for converting one of its Boeing 757s had worked on paper, but engineers knew enough to give themselves a cushion, just in case.
That's not to say that Song's creation was a leisurely trip.
Not even close.
Building an airline can take a year or more. But Delta, which along with most of the major carriers had been struggling financially because of the soft economy and a slump in travel, crafted Song in a matter of months.
It was in August that Delta Chairman Leo Mullin tapped industry veteran John Selvaggio to run the airline's new brand. It didn't have an official name -- Delta had dubbed it "LCC," for low-cost carrier -- but Mullin was clear about what he wanted:
"He wanted me to put together a team that could create a different and distinct airline and one that could never be confused with Delta," said Selvaggio, who had been Delta's senior vice president for airport customer service.
Specifically, Mullin wanted an airline with bigger planes and more seats to shuttle tourists between the Northeast and Florida, and he wanted one people would actually want to fly.
But first, there were the planes.
Delta engineers worked from August until January developing Song's signature plane, a Boeing 757.
They had to decide which aircraft to pull from Delta's fleet, choosing newer planes over older ones to keep maintenance costs down and planes with Delta's old paint scheme over those with a fresh paint job to avoid wasting money.
Next, they had to figure out how to remove the first-class cabin and the galley separating it from coach to create a single class, a Song trademark.
They also had to find a way to fit 199 leather seats, up from186 in cloth and leather.
But it wasn't until March 12, when the airline's first 757 pulled into Bay 12 at Delta Air Lines' Technical Operations Center in Atlanta, that the plan could come together.
There, in a hangar usually reserved for refurbishing older planes, the Delta start-up began to move from the drawing board to the runway.
Creation begins
From the minute Flight 775 from New York landed at Atlanta's Hartsfield airport on March 11 -- 24 minutes early, no less -- the rush was on.
Workers washed the grime from the 2-year-old plane's landing gear. Washing the gear later would have risked damaging the plane's new paint job.
Once the plane rolled into the hangar after midnight, workers unloaded old newspapers, Sky magazines and cases of Cokes and Sprites that had been left on board the night before.
By dawn, technicians were draining the fuel tanks -- government rules required the reconfigured plane be weighed with the tanks empty -- and starting to gut the interior.
One of the mechanics, Tim Bennett, jogged up the steep stairs pushed to the rear of the plane and walked briskly through the cabin to a flight attendant's jump seat fastened to the partition separating coach from the first-class galley.
"Do you want me to box this?" Bennett asked his foreman. Arnold McIntyre considered for a second then said OK. Without a word, the mechanic headed to the exit to get a box.
Refurbishing the plane, now known simply as ship No. 6717, isn't too different from the kind of work TechOps does all the time, McIntyre said. Crews routinely change the paint scheme of planes or spruce up interiors.
But this was Song's first aircraft, McIntyre said, and everything must be perfect. Instead of only a few days for the project, Delta allowed the crew 22.
A brand that sings
While mechanics were busy creating Song's first airplane, Song executive Tim Mapes was busy building the brand.
"This is very clearly positioned as a lifestyle brand," said Mapes, the airline's managing director, who drew inspiration from products such as the Volkswagen Beetle and Apple's Macintosh computers -- brands that speak to their owners' personalities.
Part of that expression can be seen in Song's bright colors and flashy amenities, features meant to stand out in a crowd and appeal to women, who usually plan family vacations.
Ship No. 6717 has blue seats trimmed in lime green, orange and purple, a combination that looks better than it sounds.
Outside, the ship wears white with a ribbon of lime green, which the company calls a "flourish." Other planes may be splashed in orange or purple. There won't be any dark blues or reds, the colors of practically every traditional airline.
Research told Mapes that Song's core customers had household incomes north of $100,000 a year and that while "they may carry Neiman Marcus credit cards in their wallets, they'll shop at Target," because they're interested in value.
They see no status in paying too much for something, he said.
"They're people who want a low fare, not so they can take the trip, but so they can stay longer or eat better or spend an extra day at Disney World," Mapes said.
Song turned to focus groups for help in shaping the airline. They made it clear that passengers are tired of being treated like cattle, herded onto crowded planes by flight attendants as curt as cowboys.
Selvaggio said the airline took those frustrations to heart.
"People on airplanes today, they have no control over what time the flight's going to leave, what they're going to eat, if they're going to eat, what they're going to watch, if there's going to be a movie," he said.
"What we decided is that we'd give people choices along the way," he said.
TVs en route
The most obvious choice will be entertainment.
Each of the seats on Song planes eventually will be equipped with touch-screen televisions.
Tom Cooper, Delta's director of programs and planning, who is overseeing the conversion of Song's fleet, said the equipment won't be ready until fall. But preparing for it is a priority. Ship No. 6717 will already be wired so the gear can simply be plugged in once it arrives from the manufacturer in October.
The equipment will let people watch television free or movies for a price. Passengers will be able to program their own playlist of songs from a digital library or play games with other passengers.
Until the gear comes in, flight attendants will let travelers borrow one of 1,000 Game Boy Advance game devices with a choice of six games.
Song also plans to offer travelers a choice of snacks.
Delta's low-cost carrier will eschew hot meals -- a rarity on planes these days, anyway -- in favor of a menu of name-brand snacks and beverages and organically grown fruit.
What's more, Song plans to charge for them.
In his office at Delta's headquarters last month, Mapes set a small bottle of water on his desk, the kind Delta currently gives away to passengers.
"This costs us money," he said, "but there's no value in it."
Song plans to give travelers Cokes and other soft drinks free, but it will charge for a bottle of Evian water or Odwalla juice -- which, not coincidentally, are produced by Coca-Cola, which has a long-standing relationship with Delta.
Delta executives weren't sure whether travelers would mind paying for snacks, so they tested the concept for four days in February on Delta flights between New York and Fort Lauderdale.
How'd it go?
"We did $400 to $600 in revenue" on each flight, Mapes said. Song also is talking to Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando about selling theme-park tickets on board the plane.
The airline is even putting a different spin on its flight attendants.
Delta flight attendants didn't interview with Song, they "auditioned."
Song managers said they wanted people who weren't just friendly but fun, people who would appreciate Song's relaxed rules and attitude.
So, while workers in Atlanta were installing a changing table in one of the plane's restrooms -- company policy discourages the use of airline jargon such as "lavatories" -- Song executives were explaining the airline's strategy to about 150 flight attendants and gate agents at a three-day retreat at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando.
As much pep rally as training school, the retreat March 26-28 featured a jazz combo, Johnny & the Flourishes, featuring Song executives -- Selvaggio played trumpet -- and sessions on everything from creativity to customer service.
During one session, about 30 employees broke into groups of three or four to make up a song or perform a skit to illustrate Song's winning attitudes.
One woman played the role of a passenger on another airline.
"Excuse me," she asked Amy Curtis, who pretended to push a beverage cart down the aisle. "Excuse me."
Curtis gave her a withering glance.
Next, Curtis played a flight attendant on Song.
"Excuse me. May I have a bottle of water?" asked a mock passenger. Curtis leaned close, as if talking to an old friend. "You know what, honey? I brought some herbal tea. Do you want some?"
Curtis, a flight attendant based in Tampa, said the difference between Song and most airlines is almost that stark. "It's a totally different mentality," she said during a break. "It's a more relaxed culture."
Song's relaxed attitude is reflected in its name, which wasn't announced until January.
"Big risk," Selvaggio told the flight attendants. "I probably got 500 e-mails saying, 'What kind of idiotic name for an airline is that?' "
Delta picked it with the help of Landor Associates, a San Francisco-based branding firm whose clients have included John Deere and FedEx. When the airline announced the name, Selvaggio, the son of a musician, said, "Just as a song is the harmonious composition of distinct yet related elements, our Song will be in harmony with each individual's self expression."
Besides, he said in Orlando, it's the kind of name, like it or not, that sticks with you.
'We built a culture'
On Wednesday, a day after workers had finished the plane's cabin and one week later than scheduled, engineers and Delta inspectors put on disposable booties to avoid scuffing the floor and scrutinized the work. Senior engineer Michael Kotas carried a sheaf of technical drawings to see whether every placard, every warning sign, was in place.
When officials with the Federal Aviation Administration inspect the finished plane, "that's the level of detail they'll be looking at," said Jerry Ballington, senior project leader.
What if there's a problem? What if one of the placards is off by a smidgen?
Ballington wouldn't even consider the possibility. "It's in the right location," he said.
The next day, Delta introduced Song to the world at a party for several hundred Delta employees in Bay 10, just around the corner from where ship No. 6717 started its makeover.
Selvaggio, wearing a gray suit and tassled loafers that befit an airline president, once again played trumpet with his band and even sang a song, the Burt Bacharach-Hal David tune, "This Guy's In Love With You."
As the band segued from jazzy ballads such as "Girl from Ipanema" to rockers such as "Johnny B. Goode," about a dozen flight attendants formed a conga line, grabbing several uniformed mechanics along the way.
"We really didn't build an airline. We built a culture," Selvaggio said at one point. Leaning into the microphone like a true bandleader, he told the employees, "This airline is all about fun, so let's have some fun out there."
Todd Pack can be reached at
tpack@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5407.
