When most people think of a garage sale, they picture a neighbor’s driveway—not a bustling aviation workshop in the shadow of the world’s busiest airport. But that’s exactly where Delta Air Lines hosts its monthly surplus sale, offering aviation enthusiasts a rare chance to own pieces of the airline’s history.
Buyers travel from across the country—and even the world—to attend. One attendee flew in from Korea; another from Michigan, armed with empty bags ready to be filled with everything from retired seats to old engine components. “We actually flew down with empty bags,” one buyer said, laughing.
Sarah Zeis was on a mission for something specific: a well-worn Delta beverage cart. “I actually need a bar cart in my apartment with these exact dimensions,” she explained. Getting it back home, however, might be an adventure in itself.
Proceeds from the sales benefit the Delta Flight Museum, just across the parking lot, which is currently celebrating a major milestone—Delta’s 100th anniversary, making it the first U.S. airline to reach a century of operation.
Marie Force, the museum’s archives director, says the airline’s origin story is as unique as they come—and it starts with a tiny pest: the boll weevil. “It’s the most unique beginning of a U.S. airline, I think,” she said. “Delta is the only airline that began as a crop-dusting company.”
Delta’s roots go back to 1925 with Huff-Daland Dusters, a crop-dusting operation based in Macon, Georgia. After its first season, the company found that most of its business came from the Mississippi Delta region. That discovery would give the future airline its name—Delta.
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