Deleted

According to someone I spoke to at DL today, DL has enough a/c currently to service about another 10 routes long haul with current a/c capacity. i do not know where they would be pulled from, but I would assume that they would be 764's.

Also from what I know, assuming that the new seats and equipment are available, a cabin can be changed in less than 48 hours. It is not a big deal.

Remember, to fly via Europe you depart from the U.S. the evening of Day 1, arrive in Europe the morning of Day 2, then wait around all day before departing the evening of Day 2 (i.e., all the flights from Europe to South Africa are overnight flights). You then arrive in JNB the morning of Day 3. So, it is not an efficient routing for U.S. customers. It involves two consecutive overnight flights, which I personally despise.

Also, the way U.S. carriers operate to South America, it is not efficient either, as the planes leave the U.S. in the evening, arrive in South America the following morning, then that $100 million piece of equipment sits in GRU or GIG all day before the return flight to the U.S. that evening. (Flights typically arrive in GIG or GRU around 8 a.m., then depart for the U.S. around 10 or 11 p.m.). If the airline used the plane to instead depart for South Africa 90 minutes after arrival in GIG, it would greatly increase utilization of that aircraft.

So, there really are some reasons that an ATL-GIG-JNB routing would offer efficiency for the traveler and the airline compared to the current state of affairs.

Having said that, I think that Delta's ultimate intent in operating this route would be to work toward the day when it could fly the route nonstop using the 777-200LR, once funds are available to buy it.

I think this is the unknown part of the equation, as clearly to make the flight work best, there needs to be some local traffic.

I will toss out a potential scenario, however. Everyone assumes that if/when Delta begins this service, SAA would have either pulled out, or announced plans to pull out, of ATL. What if SAA didn't? After all, SAA has already started service from IAD and has joined Star Alliance, yet it still operates the ATL-JNB service and hasn't announced any pullout. So, if SAA were to remain in the ATL-JNB market and remain friendly with Delta, there is the potential that SAA could codeshare with Delta on the GIG-JNB flights. SAA currently serves GRU, but it does not serve GIG. So, this would fill a gap in the SAA route network. 50 seats a day filled with SAA codeshare passengers sure wouldn't hurt.

UPS used to do it (and Delta was their ticketing agent) in about 8 and fly passengers to Cancun on the weekend. However, that is slightly different...there are issues such as repositioning the air vents and lights but the more I think about it, there more the airlines overstate the costs of realligning these things.

To be honest, I really have no idea what the time should be, but 48 hours seems extremely short, given all of the electrical and mechanical items that have to be rearranged.

Also, what about galleys and lavs. Are there any differences in galley and lav configuration between a BE-equipped 763 and a domestic 763.

It makes no sense.

1) Delta did not inherit the route rights for GIG-JNB from Pan Am. United Airlines did. UAL Corp. still has the rights to fly GIG-JNB, Delta doesn't, and never has. DAL got Pan Am's European operations; United got Pan Am's LatAm operations.

2) Varig pulled South Africa because of lack of aircraft, but partner South African Airways replaced all the capacity loss by upgrading GRU-JNB to daily and putting larger aircraft on the route. The route actually has more service today than it did when RG and SA shared the route.

While United inherited Pan Am's South America routes, Delta assumed Pan Am's European AND African routes. Now, whether GIG-JNB would be considered an African route (and hence belong to Delta) or be considered South American (and hence belong to United), I don't know.

As an essential component in the route is South America (with South Africa being the end and the stop in Brazil), I'd assume UA has the 5th freedom for local traffic on this route.

Either way, since South America flights arrive early in the morning, DL would either give its customers a horrible arrival time into JNB (you arrive about 13 hours ahead of when you left), making you pay for an extra night in a hotel room (and South Africa doesn't have a reputation as a very safe place at night). Or the plane could sit until a decent departure time. I would think DL would rather do what South African does with their flights now, which is to have a stop somewhere in Africa (DL would probably choose somewhere where they could pick up local traffic on the US legs of it, as I've been told South African's flights have light Y loads).

It was part of their Latin American network and United did inherit the route authority. They had toyed around with re-launching the flight in the mid-1990s (MIA-GIG-JNB), as Miami is home to one of the world's largest South African immigrant communities.

SAA does not do this by choice. The stops have to with operational issues with their aircraft. They have the benefit of traffic rights between New York City and Dakar and Atlanta and Isla do Sal, but not between DC and Accra.

So it sounds like those who are making the argument that this would be preferable to the European routing (which requires two overnight flights) are in for a sad surprise. They'll be doing two overnight flights this way as well.

KL #591 flies daytime AMS-JNB 10:05-20:45

KL #597 flies daytime AMS-CPT 10:20-21:55

Both provide good connections with the US overnight flights arriving at AMS.