Power Breakfast: Delta slicing costs, mayoral election, BofA, Home Depot, Comcast-NBC

Like many other companies, Delta Air Lines continues to be in the cost-cutting mode.

AJC reporter Kelly Yamanouchi writes that Delta doesn’t expect to see key revenue measures improve before the middle of next year. That means it will continue to trim costs, an executive told analysts in New York on Wednesday.

The Atlanta-based airline is in the middle of axing $200 million in overhead costs, mainly through cuts in back-office functions and salaried employees, Chief Financial Officer Hank Halter said at a Morgan Stanley conference that was also Webcast.

It is also completing the shutdown of the freighter business it inherited from its merger with Northwest Airlines, Halter said, adding that the cargo plane business lost about $150 million last year, Yamanouchi writes.

Halter also said the company has retired about 75 aircraft to the desert over time. Amid the weak economy, demand for travel is slow and fewer travelers are paying for first class and business class, so airlines have been pulling aircraft from their fleets and parking them in the desert.

Also in the AJC:

• Race a key factor in Atlanta mayoral election
• Bank of America to repay $45 billion in aid
• Home Depot manager pleads guilty in trade secrets case
• Will Gwinnett tax hike be wave of future?
• Atlantans head to Obama jobs summit
• City panel says later to vote on ‘last call’ study
• Machinists  union bid fails at AirTran

In other media:

• Comcast to pay nearly $14 billion for NBC stake
• Tiger Woods’ sponsors standing behind him — for now
• Up for second term, Fed chief heads to Congress
• As crisis in Dubai unfolds, quick answers are unlikely