Air rage: JLo, Delta and the Fox

Jennifer Lopez gave a concert Tuesday night in Atlanta. That shouldn’t be especially newsworthy; Atlanta’s a major American city that attracts prominent performers, many of whom are likely to be in town at any given time.

This particular show was different. It’s being cited as the precipitating cause of a major rift between one of Georgia’s corporate giants and one of its most historic and storied arts-entertainment venues.

JLo was featured in a private concert on the stage of Atlanta’s Fox Theatre, sponsored by Qatar Airways. Qatar, the state-owned airline of the Persian Gulf nation whose name it bears, is what you could accurately call a rival of Georgia-based Delta.

You could also, not inaccurately, call Delta and Qatar the business equivalent of mortal enemies.

The private JLo concert at the Fox was the headline event of Qatar’s “launch party” for a June 1 debut of its air service from Atlanta. Delta, along with other major commercial carriers American and United, has fought to limit access of these fast-growing state-owned airlines to U.S. airports, contending, as USA Today reports, “that the Gulf carriers receive unfair state subsidies and unfairly compete with their U.S. and European rivals.”

And this isn’t just business: USA Today also reported that Qatar CEO Akbar Al Baker scorched Delta last year with the comment that "we don't fly crap airplanes that are 35 years old," and gloated more recently that expansion to Atlanta would “rub salt in the wounds.”

So what does any of this have to do with Jennifer Lopez and the Fox?

Delta has been a principal sponsor of the historic 1920s movie palace for more than 20 years.

Delta’s chief legal officer Peter Carter has issued a public statement saying the airline will not renew its sponsorship when the contract expires slightly more than a year from now, and that Delta officials “were very surprised and disappointed when we learned that the Fox Theatre — an organization that we’ve supported for years, an organization that has called us its official airline — we were shocked and surprised when we learned that they were hosting the coming out party for Qatar.”

“Hosting” might be the sticking point. Fox responded that private events are “distinctly independent of any corporate sponsorship program” and are “in no way a violation of our contractual agreement with Delta.” To the management of the Fox, this was just another rental of the facility for a private event.

Forty years ago the disused and deteriorating Fox was on the verge of extinction. A “Save the Fox” campaign, supported by generous donations large and small, and prominent performers who brought their talents to the cause, restored the theater to its full grandeur, and it has remained a major American performance venue ever since.

It’s inconceivable that the Fox management set out to insult a major corporate patron, even if there was, perhaps, a certain cluelessness component in the mix.

Delta and the Fox have a year to mend fences. They really need to.

This story was originally published May 18, 2016 at 5:33 PM with the headline "Air rage: JLo, Delta and the Fox."