By James Pilcher
Enquirer staff writer

HEBRON - With one statement, Delta Air Lines senior vice president Greg Riggs summed up both the past and present of the airline as it celebrated its 75th anniversary Thursday.

Delta "used to be referred to by the business press as that small, sleepy Southern carrier," Riggs told a gathering of Delta and airport employees and elected officials from around the area. "They're not saying that anymore."

Given recent headlines generated by the Atlanta-based carrier, it can no longer be called sleepy - nor is it small -- it is now the nation's third-largest airline.

While company officials stressed Delta's past Thursday, clouds of uncertainty surround the carrier's future. Last week, the airline said that a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing is a distinct possibility if costs aren't reduced.

Delta's stock continues its decline, dropping another 5.1 percent to close at $3.51 Thursday, and Moody's rating service downgraded the airline's debt even further Thursday.

The company's struggles with its major union continues, with Delta trying to get its 7,500-plus pilots to agree to $1 billion in annual cost cuts that include a 35 percent pay cut, cuts to benefits and pensions, and increased productivity. The pilots union has offered a package worth as much as $705 million and would include a 23 percent pay cut.

Other front-line employees at Thursday's event conceded while they are trying to keep a brave face, they are worried about the future. Delta employs more than 8,000 locally between its own employees and workers at its Erlanger-based regional subsidiary Comair.

Riggs said while he could not comment on the specific future of the Cincinnati operation, he said the airline's second-largest hub is "critical to Delta at this time."

"Hubs carry huge costs but they also carry revenue opportunities and this country needs a hub network," said Riggs, who also is Delta's chief corporate officer and general counsel. "How else would people get from Dothan, Ala. to Syracuse? There is not enough traffic to support a non-stop flight between the two cities, so a hub network is needed."

Riggs and other Delta executives are preparing a restructuring plan that should be presented to the company board of directors later this month that could include some changes to the airline's network, including its Cincinnati hub.

In addition, many industry analysts and experts say that given Cincinnati's location and Delta's dominance here, they expect the airline to consolidate operations at this hub while cutting them elsewhere. That could continue even under Chapter 11 reorganization.

That would stay in keeping with Delta's history at the local airport, which has grown ever since it switched over from Cincinnati's Lunken Airport in the late 1940s.

Riggs and others spent most of Thursday's event in Concourse A at the airport highlighting that relationship.

Delta treated dignitaries to flights on its restored DC-3, selling some seats for charity. It also displayed the "Spirit of Delta," the Boeing 767-232 employees bought for the company in 1982, and items from its museum in Atlanta.

And Delta employees even got into the act, with the in-flight service department giving out pieces of birthday cake to go along with the free food provided by airport vendors to everyone - including curious passers-by.

Delta began on June 17, 1929 with a flight from Dallas to Shreveport, La. In 1941, it began service to Cincinnati's Lunken Airport, and was one of the first airlines to switch over to the Northern Kentucky airport later in that decade when it opened. Later, it was the first to introduce jet service here.

Riggs quoted from one of the first ads placed locally for Delta service, saying it claimed that Cincinnati was "gateway to the South."

"Now, with service to 130 nonstop destinations out of Cincinnati, to numerous foreign countries ... CVG is a gateway to the world," he said.

E-mail jpilcher@enquirer.com