Delta to Fly International From Salt Lake City Airport
By Paul Beebe, The Salt Lake Tribune
Oct. 16–Delta Air Lines will announce new non-stop service from Salt Lake City to Edmonton, Alberta, next week and may pick up service to Mexico City dropped by AeroMexico when it abruptly pulled out of Salt Lake last month.
The new Canadian route and Delta’s interest in flying to Mexico’s capital from its hub at Salt Lake City International Airport are part of the No. 3 airline’s strategy of making international flying a big part of its makeover as it works to exit bankruptcy within two years.
Delta has said it will increase international flying by 25 percent while cutting its domestic schedule as much as 20 percent. In Salt Lake, where international service is limited, Delta will start daily flights to the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta on Nov. 1. Delta also plans to fly to Mazatlan and Cozumel next March, bringing the number of Mexico destinations Delta serves from Salt Lake to five.
“We are looking at doing more in Mexico out of Salt Lake. We are looking at other destinations, not only leisure destinations, but there are some good ethnic destinations as well,” Bob Cortelyou, Delta’s vice president of network planning, said Friday.
Cortelyou said Delta is “interested” in taking over AeroMexico’s flights to Mexico City and suggested that Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, may be a route that Utah’s Hispanic community would support.
“You are seeing a commitment to Salt Lake. We wouldn’t be adding new cities if we weren’t excited about (the hub),” Cortelyou said.
In September, a week after it sought bankruptcy protection, Delta pledged to beef up Salt Lake with flights to 12 new locations by the end of this year. At the time, Cortelyou said Delta was continuing to expand service to big U.S. cities.
While the new routes provide stability to Salt Lake, domestic service isn’t Delta’s priority right now. International flying is poised to become a bigger moneymaker. Demand for foreign travel has been growing steadily for two years, Cortelyou said. And with little international competition from low-cost carriers, Delta can command higher fares than on domestic runs.
Already, Delta has announced new non-stop service from Atlanta to Tel Aviv beginning in March. Berlin, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Copenhagen and Chennai, India, are on tap. Not to be outdone, Northwest, which filed for bankruptcy protection on the same day as Delta, increased its international capacity by 5 percent last month and said it will cut domestic flights and routes at least 10 percent. Before United’s bankruptcy, the ailing airline got a third of its passenger revenue from overseas flying. Now it’s half.
“The bottom line is (international routes) are more profitable. Pricing trends have been down in the U.S. domestic system and they’ve been up in the international system,” said Helane Becker, an airline analyst with the Benchmark Co. in New York.
Delta’s efforts to bring more international travel to Salt Lake are unfolding as the airline struggles to recover from nearly $10 billion in losses since 2001. Cortelyou said he doesn’t know how big Delta’s international operations, now at 19 percent of passenger revenues, will become. But since January the airline has announced, introduced or sought authority to fly to 40 new cities in Europe, India, South America and the Middle East, at the same time cutting lightly-booked domestic flights and routes that are not profitable.
With jet fuel prices at record highs, most of Delta’s new international service will be run out of its Atlanta hub and from John F. Kennedy International in New York, airports that are closer to Europe and South America. Salt Lake is likely to get some piece of the action, either with new flights that funnel more passengers to eastern airports or with small regional jets able to reach short-range international destinations.
“There’s quite a few (announcements) coming,” airport spokeswoman Barbara Gann said. She declined to elaborate.
DELTA DEVELOPMENTS THIS WEEK:
–Subsidiary Comair will cut up to 650 jobs, wages and its fleet to save up to $70 million a year.
–Delta’s stock is delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.
–Delta sues Los Angeles, seeking court permission to end payment on bonds that finance its operations at Los Angeles International Airport.
–Delta is in talks to obtain $300 million in letters of credit from Merrill Lynch & Co. as a part of its credit-card processing agreement with U.S. Bank.
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