Delta. When the boll weevil was ravaging Southern cotton fields in the 1920s, the Delta Company dusted fields with pesticides. One of its pilots, C.E. Vollman, was an agricultural agent, who saw a great future for the company, and later became its president. By 1929, Delta had transformed itself into a passenger airline. And in 1945, Vollman became company president. The former agricultural agent presided over Delta's expansion until he died in 1966.