Delta weak in Mountain-West despite SLC hub
 

A family friend that lives near ASE needs to get Houston to be with her sister. I offered to get her there using my Skymiles since I have more than I ever want to use. But surprise Delta doesn't even serve ASE. How can they just ommit such a major destination?

They normally fly to ASE (pre-COVID) from SLC year round and ATL in the winter, but it was one of the 11 stations suspended back in June due to COVID.

https://news.delta.com/delta-suspend...lect-us-cities

HDN and MTJ didn't return this season, either. IMO the Ski Country destinations (except for SLC-JAC) have always been kind of weak out of SLC. Most of the money comes from rich east coasters or LAX.

I think this has alot to do with the CR7 being the only commercial aircraft that can fly there & how few of them are in the Delta Connection network right now. Skywest and Endeavor are the only 2 Delta Connection carriers that even operate them. Endeavor's bounce between hubs in DTW CVG & JFK. OO's are entirely SLC-based. Atlanta has no Skywest flying or CR7s right now at all.

ASE should be able to work with a SLC or LAX turn but maybe it just wasn't in the network plan right now with everything else going on.

Tough to compete with the UA DEN fortress hub. So much fly in ski traffic comes from the east that connecting in Utah makes little sense. Still surprising that DL can’t make a few daily SLC-EGE, SLC-ASE, SLC-MTJ and SLC-HDN regional flights work.

The SLC hub in general has some odd routes that seem questionable while other obvious ones have never been tried.

To the OP, Delta services both GJT from SLC and EGE from ATL which are reasonable drives.

Such a major destination? I had to look up ASE - I did not recognize this airport code.
And then from Wikipedia: Aspen is a city located in Colorado. With a 2020 population of 7,287, it is the 63rd largest city in Colorado and the 3858th largest city in the United States.

It's a nice little town with some historic buildings and a handful of good hotels. The drive in and out of the place (from Colorado Springs and then toward Vail and Denver) is nice too, but I wouldn't want to do it in a snowstorm. I consider it to be much more attractive than Vail.

Ha! I wish it was that unknown.:D

ASE is a well known (to skiers) resort town where the rich folk go to play. *Average* cost of a single family house in ASE is $11 million (one of the highest in the Nation)...and I bet many of those are not primary residences. That being said, if you have that kind of jack, there's a good chance you aren't flying commercial anyway.

It is a beautiful drive, but CO 82 is closed during the winter months, so to get from ASE to DEN, you have to drive NW to Glenwood Springs and then E on I-70 to DEN. Probably adds at least 1.5-2hours to the trip each way (worse in snow or traffic at the Eisenhower tunnel).

I landed the Sunday after New Years last year and have never seen so many private planes in a line waiting to take off. There were so many that my flight from SLC had to circle for a bit before we could land.

Yup, this time of year it's not uncommon to see ASE on the ATC delay boards because of all that GA traffic and their takeoff complexities with that field.

I suggest watching South Park Episode 2 from Season 6. That will give you a good feel for Aspen and a good laugh at the timeshare industry. ;)

But the local population size doesn't determine what type of destination it is. My guess is most of the local residents there work in the industries that draw the tourists to Aspen throughout the year but especially in winter. If you have your settings right in Google Maps, you can see there are several large ski resorts (along with the ski trails) around the Aspen area. Lots of folks with timeshares and such who go there to ski for a week or two in winter.

You should go to DAB during the Daytona 500. :) The line-up of private jets coming in in the morning looks like LAX with several sets of landing lights visible from jets lined-up on approach for quite a while in the morning then a takeoff queue that looks like the evening rush to Europe out of JFK once the race is over.

I was thinking Dumb and Dumber might be instructive. "A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I'm talking about a little place called Aspen."

Or SDF during the Ky Derby, or whatever city hosts the Superbowl, etc. etc.

And I should clarify, nearly all the private planes I saw were jets, some quite large.