jj243

I noticed the other day that there is a SJC-JFK daytime flight. When did that happen? At this point, the whole focus city thing seems so overblown, I would just be happy with some more frequencies on existing hub routes. AUS, BNA, BOS, and any kind of international routes all seem like pipe dreams now. So does a Sky Club. Frustrating.

VFR

If you look at the history and talk page for the 'Delta Air Lines' article on Wikipedia, they've been having this discussion about what constitutes a Delta focus city for a while, and have seemingly come to the conclusion that it is only a focus city if Delta refers to it as such on their website, usually in an investor presentation where they list hubs. By this standard, Delta has two focus cities: CVG and RDU.

There are a lot of folks, both on this site and writing blogs, that are quite quick to laud Delta for opening up focus cities in AUS, SJC, MCO, and BNA, but it seems that the primary sources for such an attribution are limited. Non-hub/focus city flying from those airports is quite limited still.

That said, I could see SJC getting a Sky Club and a flight to CDG, it just depends on how much of an appetite Delta has for another battle with Alaska for market share.

Mountain Explorer

Call it what you want, DL has been the fastest growing airline at SJC for each of the past few years and the result is noticeable. It's now common to see 4 or 5 mainline DL jets simultaneously at SJC, compared to just 7 or 8 years ago when you'd see at best a CR2 and a CR9 at any given time. I used to drive up to SFO to catch a DL flight all the time, now I almost never do.

ethernal

Hasn't Delta officially referred to SJC as a focus city now?

Regardless, I find it rather humorous given how little traffic Delta does through it. It is obviously growing fast, but it's growing off of a tiny base. They do maybe a million passengers a year. Less than 25% of what they do at SFO down the street or in RDU. Growing twice as fast off of a tiny base is pretty easy to do.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that they are clearly pricing to fill planes (via connecting traffic of course). Always full, always W0/F0. Many connecting routes price out cheaper in F than ex-ATL in Y - even last minute (e.g., F MEM-SJC via ATL on a high demand Monday/Thursday commute next week is the same $1097 price as Y out of ATL). I realize this is pretty typical, but extra frustrating when you have to call in to even get 36C for a 5 hour flight (if I don't call, I'll end up in 37E or 36B).

Mountain Explorer

Yes, many times.

HDQDD

Pretty sure the only non-hub flights from BNA, AUS have is RDU and CVG (BNA might also have MCO, not sure). SJC only has LAS in addition to other DL hubs. MCO is a different animal and used to be a former hub in the Comair days.

DL is pretty much grabbing every growing area and calling it a "focus city". But at the end of the day, it's apparently just marketing speak.