Originally Posted by
TheMoose
While this is good news for Minnesota and the Upper Midwest, the extremely early timing of the announcement is very odd. MSP-ICN was just announced a few months ago for an April 2019 start. This could easily be a June 2019 start if they wanted to.
Knowing Delta, and how it’s used the MSP market as a pawn before (renegotiating bond agreements, cancelling NRT if it didn’t get HND), there has to be some political/governmental angle to dangling a flagship route like this with a 20-month lead time.
Delta announced ATL-PVG and launched it 12 months later. When they announced LAX-PVG in January 2015, they launched it in July, a mere 7 months later.
So, what’s up Delta’s sleeve?
It could just be as simple as the fact that A) They need to announce the route early to get the frequency allocations and B) They won't have A350 slack in their fleet until Summer 2020.
On top of that, we're well into the booking window for next summer already, and you wouldn't want to start a route in shoulder/low season.