Delta Air Lines Inc. finished relocating Northwest Airlines' operations control center to Atlanta as the carriers move toward completing their integration, Chief Executive Officer Richard Anderson said.

All 250 of Northwest's operations control workers have moved from that carrier's former Eagan, Minn., headquarters to a newly renovated part of Delta's offices in Atlanta, Anderson said today in his weekly recorded message to employees.

The shift puts Delta a step closer to Anderson's goal of getting a single operating certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration by year's end, after buying Northwest in 2008 to become the world's biggest carrier. Operations control centers handle the dispatching of flights and crews and coordinate critical functions such as maintenance.

"It's really the head of the airline, where everything happens, and it works 24/7," Anderson said.

Anderson told employees that Delta is carrying six of the eight teams in the Major League Baseball playoffs on chartered flights: the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Philadelphia Phillies, Minnesota Twins, Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels.

Delta executives in the New York and Minneapolis hubs have a "friendly wager" on their teams' games, in which employees in the losing city must don the other's uniforms and cook local cuisine for their peers.

"We are the official airline of the Twins


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and the Yankees, so I'm completely neutral," Anderson said.