N830MH

Hi All,

Why DL hasn't expanding more new European & African service expansion? Is that reason why due to high cost of the fuel and now, the fuel price has already come down. I wasn't sure if DL will resuming more specific new routes. It's whether if DL will have a plan to start new nonstop from ATL-GVA, ATL-CMN, JFK-CMN, ATL-ALG, JFK-HEL, JFK-OSL, JFK-LIS. I'm sure they have enough aircraft availability out there.

Your thoughts? Comments?

krpjr

Your guess is as good as mine...I'm waiting on that JFK-OSL route that never got instated....

Throw Down Your Leavy Screens

I've always wondered why DL does not serve LIS/OPO, especially from BOS. There are a fair amount of people of Portuguese descent in eastern Massachusetts (Emeril Lagasse, anyone?), which means O/D traffic, and BOS-LIS/OPO can easily be served by a 752. Maybe an alternating-route trip BOS-LIS-OPO and BOS-OPO-LIS like the flights to DUB/SNN used to be way back when?

Or is DL just biding their time until the new LIS airport opens up in 5-10 years across the Tejo River...?

rwoman

I thought DL used the JV with AF/KL to get many to these destinations. Perhaps O&D does not support at least some of these for direct routes from the US?

3Cforme

Why don't all airlines fly everywhere?

As for BOS-LIS, yes, it's 752-able, but it's also served non-stop seasonally by SATA International, which also has some BOS-Azores flights. JFK, as a DL hub, might be a better origin but that already has competition with both TAP and UA-operated flights from EWR to LIS.

MSPeconomist

Strategies change. For a long time, USA legacy carriers tended to serve many foreign destinations nonstop. I remember the time that TWA advertised/bragged about its non stops into 30 or so European airports. I also remember NW having non stops to a number of places in Asia, and then the phase where all Asian service seemed to go through the NRT hub. Along the way, the NW/KLM partnership and then joint venture caused it to make sense to run non stops to AMS and rely on KLM connections to most European destinations. Now DL is back to having lots of non stops, particularly from ATL and JFK, into a wide variety of places in Europe, plus Latin America and Africa. For Asia, we've seen non stops into PEK, PVG, and HKG, apparently with mixed success.

Denolloyd

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B206 Safari/7534.48.3)

I'd be happy with the return of JFK-OTP

sfozrhfco

Oil prices and the economic situation in Europe are big headwinds. Combined this with the JV, it makes more economic sense to fly people through CDG/AMS/FCO. You can expect less P2P Europe service rather than more.

MSPeconomist

I would greatly prefer to connect in AMS rather than JFK or ATL. I get annoyed when delta.dumb tries to force me through their hubs and onto sometimes the 757s TATL to my destination rather than offering me a nice connection through AMS using KLM.

n301dp

From what I hear, Delta is planning on opening several routes to Europe in the near future on their soon-to-be-delivered A388s.

One route being toyed with a is through service from PHX-FLL-BSL. Experts are saying that the price of J seats will start at $200 for the entire service.

For reference, here is a pic of the first DL A380 doing flight tests in Germany:

c_d

I did pay a substantial premium in the past and would do it again for reinstating TXL-JFK (or hell even ATL). Connecting in AMS or CDG is driving me crazy; simple 1-stops are inflated to 3-4 stops now. Add in 2hrs average connection time and your trip just got a difference of 6 additional hours of a seamless ST experience.

dgxoxo

Between Air Berlin and the obnoxious landing fees at the new Berlin Airport, I don't think Delta will ever return to Berlin. Which is tragic...

c_d

What new airport? When I bought some real estate close to SXF in '96, I was told: "Next year the new airport will open!". Anyway, Air Berlin a p2p airline with perfect Euro city-hoppers and good tourist bombers but intolerable as a legacy carrier with no real access to a dense route network. Top Bonus was a blast about 8 years ago but now is even slam dunked by SM.

In early June, I was finally willing to give AB another try after they had officially joined OW. They were unable to book a simple SAT-[...]-TXL online and I was quoted an outrageous $2.8k in Y by phone. IB and BA both had <$700 available.

In my humble opinion they had years to prepare for joining OW, this is not fresh news. I have little sympathy for the ongoing problems and not even the chocolate heart can help me over that.

cullen24

I hope to see mode codesharing or Delta flights to the Baltics
Othewise Im stuck with Air Baltic

MSPeconomist

Nice work. That is an enormous DL widget on the tail. It looks so much better than the white-painted CRJ-200 in St George.