Salt Lake City is getting a nonstop route to London, one of two new routes announced byDelta Air Lines this week. Delta also revealed plans to add nonstop service between New York JFK and the Scottish capital of Edinburgh .
Delta's Salt Lake City route will operate seasonally, launching May 1 with daily flights toLondon Heathrow Airport on 210-seat Boeing 767-300ER aircraft. The New York-Edinburgh route launches May 26, with Delta operating one daily round-trip flight on 163-seat Boeing 757 aircraft, according to Business Traveller magazine.
Delta said it was launching both routes as part of its new joint-venture partnership with Virgin Atlantic that began in 2013.
The London route was lauded by officials at Salt Lake City International, which has long been Delta's top western hub. The airline will be the only one flying between Utah and London.
For Salt Lake City International , securing new overseas routes has been a priority in recent years. It will now have three European routes once the Heathrow service begins. Delta also flies from Salt Lake City to Paris (year-round) and Amsterdam (seasonal).
"International travel is up all throughout the world and Salt Lake City is no exception," airport spokeswoman Bianca Shreeve says to Deseret News of Salt Lake City. "The Paris flight has been a success for Delta and Amsterdam has been tremendously successful, so we're hopeful that London goes off with a bang as well."
Also at Salt Lake City, Delta will add a domestic route to Raleigh-Durham starting in March. That route, announced earlier this month, will restore a route Delta dropped last year, theTriangle Business Journal reports. The Raleigh-based publication notes "Delta has offered RDU-to-SLC service twice before. The route was available between 2005 and 2009 and then again in 2013 to 2014."
Delta is by far the dominant carrier at Salt Lake City, where it controls about 71% of seats for sale from the airport, according to aviation site anna.aero. Southwest is No. 2 at the airport with about 11% of overall seat capacity there, anna.areo says.
As for Delta's Edinburgh route, The Scotsman newspaper notes Delta's JFK-Edinburgh route "will come seven years after Delta scrapped the route after switching it from Edinburgh-Atlanta."
And unlike with its Salt Lake City route, Delta will face competition from its two biggest U.S. rivals. American also flies from Edinburgh to JFK while United flies to its hub at Newark Liberty. All three airlines use Boeing 757 on those flights.
REFERENCE - http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/2015/08/28/salt-lake-city-lands-london-heathrow-nonstop--delta-adds-uk-routes/71315284/
No comments:
Post a Comment