Delta’s big summer plans over the Atlantic may be old news by now, but it wasn’t until this week that I had time to really look into what the airline has decided to do. And you know what? It’s not quite what I expected to find.
The airline has really gone big into Southern Europe leisure destinations, and there just isn’t much beyond that. As of now, only one new European destination has been announced next summer (Catania). That is also the only growth from JFK. Most of the growth is coming out of Atlanta.
Delta’s overall Atlantic plan includes the following year-over-year filed changes in next July’s schedule:
- Atlanta – Amsterdam increased from 18x weekly to 3x daily
- Atlanta – Athens increased from 1x daily to 11x weekly
- Atlanta – Barcelona increased from 1x daily to 10x weekly
- Atlanta – Brussels new 3x weekly (shifted from JFK which drops from 1x daily to 4x weekly)
- Atlanta – Naples new 4x weekly
- Atlanta – Rome increased from 2x daily to 17x weekly
- Atlanta – Stuttgart is canceled
- Atlanta – Zurich increased from 4x weekly to 1x daily
- Boston – Barcelona new 3x weekly
- Boston – Milan/Malpensa new 4x weekly
- Detroit – Dublin new 4x weekly
- Detroit – Munich increased from 4x weekly to 1x daily (shifted from JFK which is canceled)
- Minneapolis/St Paul – Rome new 4x weekly
- New York/JFK – Catania new 1x daily
- Portland (OR) – Amsterdam is canceled (now operated by KLM instead)
What is the overall theme here? There is some shifting of capacity in Germany and Brussels, for example. But as I said up top, the real growth is happening in Greece, Italy, and Spain.
That Southern Europe flying has grown like you can’t believe. Let me take a little look back here thanks to Cirium data:
Delta/Northwest Departing Seats from Europe
Data via Cirium
Just look at that increase we’ve seen in Southern Europe since before the pandemic. In 2019, Southern Europe accounted for 21 percent of Delta’s seats over the Atlantic. But next summer? It’ll be 32 percent.
Perhaps it’s not a surprise to see such growth in the region. We’ve seen a bottomless pit of demand over the Atlantic during the summer into primary tourist markets, and those just happen to concentrate themselves around the Mediterranean. So it might be more interesting to look at what’s happening elsewhere to see how Delta thinks about the region.
Amsterdam, Paris, and London aren’t fair comparisons without looking at what the joint venture partners are doing. After all, since they split revenue, it doesn’t really matter who is flying the airplane. It can still be considered Delta’s capacity to sell.
So, let’s see how those come out when we include everything.
Delta/Northwest/Air France/KLM/Virgin Atlantic Departing Seats from Europe
Data via Cirium
Amsterdam is still down, but not nearly as bad as Delta is down alone. KLM is simply getting more capacity from Delta, like the Portland flight which switches. But again, it’s down overall. This is the result of continued issues with the Dutch government trying to restrict capacity. There really isn’t much more that can be done there.
Meanwhile in Paris, there still is large growth on all sides. But again, there’s only so much that Delta and friends can do in that airport. Air France continues to find new opportunities like Phoenix, etc, but it’s unclear how many more of those it has up its sleeve.
And London is, well, it’s London. Once Virgin Atlantic joined forces with Delta, capacity was reallocated to serve more in the Transatlantic market. But that airport is full, so the only real potential here is to get more seats on each airplane, something that might not really be helpful anyway. More flights to more places would be more interesting, but it’s not on the table.
I broke out Scandinavia as well in the original chart, and that’s because SAS will eventually be joining the joint venture. The only point here is to show just how small that market is for Delta today. I imagine there will be more opportunity in the future.
Other than that, the only real growth outside of Southern Europe is in the British Isles. We’re talking about those big leisure destinations like Dublin or Scotland. These markets are attractive because they are short and can be served with smaller airplanes if desired. The demand is big in summer, so it’s worth adding more capacity.
The other markets, highlighted by Germany completing falling out of favor, are just not going to get any love from Delta. The airline continues to pull back in Germany in particular.
So, next summer is all about those big markets on the Med. Beyond that and the hubs, there just isn’t much more that Delta cares about for now. I have no doubt those trends will shift eventually, but that’s an issue for another day. For next summer, Delta’s mission is clear.
27 comments on “Delta Looks to Southern Europe for Growth”
Why is DL not growing in Paris ? Paris airports are not full and the French Govt is not making life difficult for airlines. Unlike LHR, there’s a huge amount of feed available.
Additionally… if Heathrow is deemed full, why not go for Gatwick ? Delta already fly summer seasonal from Gatwick to JFK and plenty of other long-haul carriers like Emirates or Singapore have realised even with lower yields it’s worthwhile when Heathrow slot prices are prohibitively high. Gatwick management would kneel and beg to get more transatlantic flights.
Gatwick has only one effective runway, and it is slot-controlled also. Plus it’s a pretty long way from London. Just not very practical.
Yes, Gatwick is slot-controlled… but that just means you need to pick a time to fly when the runway is not already maxed out. Slots are available at Gatwick… and even slots at peak times can be obtained for a fraction of the cost of Heathrow slots.
Yes, Gatwick is further from central London than Heathrow… but there’s a train taking 30 or 40 mins and which runs about 10 times per hour in each direction.
For trans-At flights arriving at Heathrow, perhaps a third of the pax are connecting onwards. You can’t do that at Gatwick. Or at least it’s very limited. So if Gatwick is a dead end you have to find some other way to increase your local pax by 50% to fill the aircraft and still cover your costs.
A lot of passengers on BA, AA and UA flying transatlantic at Heathrow are connecting. But who are the DL pax connecting with at Heathrow ? Virgin don’t do shorthaul, and anyone connecting with AF or KL is probably better off flying from the USA straight to CDG or AMS direct instead of going via Heathrow.
Paris is already huge. Does it really need to grow more?
Why should DL not grow at AF ? I thought that’s the whole idea of hub-and-spoke / network carriers
Anon – Delta is growing in Paris. Take a look at the chart. It’s just running out of steam on where it can keep growing.
As for London, Gatwick just doesn’t work. I don’t understand why it doesn’t do better, but it’s is pretty much a UK origin airport, and that is not Delta’s game.
Brett, think of Gatwick as the Ontario of London. It’s just got the rep as the cheap airport that is harder to get to, but with the same kinds of slot restrictions as Heathrow.
John G – I’m very familiar with Gatwick, and I like it myself. But it just doesn’t work from the US. Just ask JetBlue which turned it seasonal this year and then pushed the restart out until June. Americans just won’t use that airport.
Some changes in Europe are missing: so Delta changes the aircraft at JFK-BER from 763 to A333 from May 2025. Sounds minor, but it’s an increase in capacity of around 40% (depending on the config)
… Won’t ITA move over to Star Alliance with Lufthansa’s purchase?
… Thus…the increase in routes to Italy is positioning to counter Lufthansa/United/Air Canada?
CJ – Yes, ITA will move over, but it was already kicked out of the joint venture, so it wasn’t really a very important partner for Delta anymore.
Germany is a tough market for both American and Delta. American has historically had weak point of sale originating in Germany. For Delta, it has to rely on hubs to fill planes and is primarily one directional on point-of-sale. Tourism remains strong to Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, and so the new DL schedules make sense, and closely mirror, with more seats and service, what AA has planned for Summer 2025. The route reveals so far for Summer 2025 show an abundant reliance on leisure and premium leisure, which makes sense as these are seasonal services, but all depends on whether the economy, and the dollar, hold up.
Delta has had a disproportionately larger presence in southern Europe since the Pan Am acquisition since it was the first of the current big 3 asset acquisitions that included continental Europe; AA and UA’s European acquisitions before were focused on LHR.
The problem w/ southern Europe has been that the demand is very strong but lasted for only a few months. It has simply not been worth it to add capacity for demand that lasts 3 months. Now, however, European demand is stretching to last 6 months; combined w/ seasonal routes to Latin America and the S. Pacific, catering to expanded southern European demand makes sense.
UA said last summer that it would trim capacity in northern Europe and shift it south and American’s route announcement to Europe follows the same theme as DL’s.
UA hasn’t announced its international route expansions or realignments – there will be some routes dropped because of the Middle East – and DL hasn’t announced its Pacific expansion.
Europe as a whole is not growing; air service increases are the result of the huge amount of travel to Europe by Americans; southern Europe is growing while central and northern Europe are not.
There will be some new alliance hub additions but it makes sense to fly as much capacity directly where customers want to fly. All of the European capacity for each of the big 3 and their JV partners is under the JV so trading some AMS connecting capacity for a new flight to southern Europe benefits the JV.
It is also noteworthy that according to your charts, DL flies more than half of its TATL capacity to non-JV partner hubs which compares favorable to AA and UA but also counter to the internet notion that DL flies just to its JV partner hubs.
BOS and MSP are the winners with new markets while the conversion of the ex-Latam A350s to DL international standard configurations means that DL is replacing some of the ATL-southern Europe capacity with more flights to maintain the same number of seats, even if additional flights skew to more premium seats.
Except that Pan Am was never really as strong in Southern Europe at all. It flew to MAD, LIS, FCO, MXP, yes, but ATH was served via FRA. So you are not correct. Delta now has a larger Southern European network that ever, through organic expansion.
Despite a few routes being shifted away from JFK, there’s still service from a flag carrier as a substitute.
How are they managing Dublin additions? There’s considerable drama there now over seat limits which have required the airlines to downsize operations. MOL is predictably livid, and it sounds like it’ll be punted by Irish politicians to an EU Court. The US is concerned it violates open trade. Plenty of potential precedent setting legal rulings to come.
Eric – Beats me, but it’s just Mon/Tue/Thu/Sat flights, so maybe those days have more time. Also, it’s a comparatively late arrival in DUB at 930a, so that must have helped.
With Ita / Alitalia leaving Skyteam, and Air Europa strong in Spain for connections, no wonder Delta is growing towards the south. It can rely on its JV partners in France, the Netherlands and the UK for feeding its hubs in the US and is the better positioned carrier to serve those routes : having klm fly Madrid-Atlanta would not make sense !
The only people who willingly fly Delta are trailer trash with money who can afford to upgrade from Spirit and Frontier but are still envious of Comfort Plus. And its CEO is a homophobe.
Catania is a bit of a head scratcher. Did anyone at Delta actually visit Catania before announcing service there? It’s not a nice place.
Palermo is the more tourist friendly side of Sicily.
We all have opinions. Did anyone at DL ask you about your favorite part of the island? Did you have fun there? It probably rained when you were there. Good on DL for giving it a go in spite of your favorite side.
In 2019 (sorry I don’t have 2023 data) Catania had 10.1 million pax while Palermo had 7 million pax. Delta are going for the primary airport in Sicily, not the secondary one.
With the summer heat waves becoming a consistent trend in southern Europe, I wonder if the travel demand to Greece, Italy and Spain will shift. Maybe not in 2025, but in the future if 100C days become the norm in Athens come July/August, it may not be the top summer destination it once was.
I guarantee 100C days will impact tourism!
Sounds like Kuwait City with its 50C days