Delta Air Lines Plans New Flights From New York’s JFK Airport
By The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mar. 8–Delta Air Lines will significantly expand short-haul flights at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in its latest move to build a moneymaking route system.
The airline plans 46 new departures from JFK this summer, boosting peak-day totals to 139 and essentially building it into a small hub. Delta said it will serve 67 destinations nonstop either with its own planes or regional units flying as the Delta Connection.
Executives said the move should make it more convenient for passengers, especially in Northeast cities, to connect with Delta’s international flights.
“There’s not good connectivity to get someone from Hartford to Europe,” said Jim Whitehurst, Delta’s chief operating officer. “This short-haul feed will help support our [international flights] out of JFK. It augments our existing international system.”
The move will add 15 markets, all within 425 miles of JFK, Delta officials said. Five of those markets will get 50-seat regional jets, and 10 will get turboprop aircraft.
Passengers prefer jets to slower and louder propeller-driven aircraft, but Whitehurst said Delta chose turboprops on some routes because they offer a 50 percent fuel savings and greater baggage capacity.
Mike Boyd, an aviation consultant, said the Delta Connection can compete successfully in Northeast markets dominated by upstart JetBlue, which is based at JFK.
“It may seem irrational to put turboprops in a market where JetBlue has four flights a day,” Boyd said. “But Delta isn’t interested in the New York-to-Syracuse market. They want passengers in Syracuse who are connecting to Paris, and this is a way to grab those kinds of passengers.”
Delta filed for Chapter 11 protection last September after more than $10 billion in net losses in recent years. Under a turnaround plan, it is trying to realize $3 billion in annual cost cuts or revenue gains. Part of that plan involves cutting domestic capacity and adding international routes.
JFK has long been used by U.S. airlines primarily as a gateway for trans-Atlantic flights. Delta gained a large presence there about 15 years ago through a buyout of Pan Am’s European network. It currently has 31 international destinations from JFK and plans to add six more.
JFK’s domestic profile has risen with the success of JetBlue. Whitehurst said Delta’s service at JFK is different from that of JetBlue, which operates almost exclusively domestic flights.
“[JetBlue] serves Buffalo,” he said. “But they don’t connect Buffalo to an international network the way we do.”
Delta’s main hub is in Atlanta, and it also has smaller connecting hubs in Cincinnati and Salt Lake City. It scuttled a Dallas-Fort Worth hub over a year ago.
—–
To see more of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.ajc.com.
Copyright (c) 2006, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.