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Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL) did pretty well in the Wall Street Journal’s Middle Seat rankings, which was quite a turnaround from last year. In 2010, Delta had all sorts of problems including canceled flights, customer complaints, baggage issues, and simply being late. Investments in technology and human resources helped to change things in 2011. New maintenance initiatives also allowed Delta to keep things running at its less busy operations. Additionally, Delta performed well in a report from Flightstats. In a measure of punctuality, Delta ranked second, with 83% of flights arriving on time. Meanwhile, Delta’s traffic was up 0.2% in 2011, which compares a bit unfavorably to its 0.8% increase in capacity. More specifically, domestic traffic decreased 0.7%, but international traffic increased 0.5%. Total number of passengers overall also increased a bit from last year. As for value metrics, ratios like price to earnings, price/earnings to growth, and price to sales are pretty high for Delta since many investors feel that this company is the leader of the industry. Margins are a bit weak though – those numbers are 19.33% gross and 5.23% operating. Furthermore, Delta has had cash flowing out for quite some time now: $1.715 billion flowed out during 2010 and $585 million flowed out during the first three quarters of 2011.

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