Delta has called Austin a “focus city” for years now, but it doesn’t really have […]
Delta has called Austin a “focus city” for years now, but it doesn’t really have much to show for it.?That appears to be changing as Delta has announced plans to grow its presence by 20 percent.?Austin will get three new cities on Delta, including the bustling metropolises of McAllen and Midland/Odessa.?That is not a misprint.
Up until now, Delta has done very little flying from Austin outside its hubs.?Forgetting about one-off SXSW flights, the airline has 1x daily on weekdays to former hub Cincinnati and 2x daily to other focus(ish) city Raleigh/Durham. Starting in Oct, it added 1x daily to both Las Vegas and Orlando, hoping to capture some of that big leisure money.
But now, we have three new cities joining the Austin network from late-Apr and more flights being added to a couple existing spots.
new 3x daily to McAllen new 3x daily to Midland/Odessa new 3x daily to Nashville add 1x daily to Cincinnati add 1x daily to Raleigh/DurhamNashville, ok, I get it.?That’s a former focus city for Delta that is still a strategic location for the airline. Nashville is one of only 9 cities connected nonstop to every Delta hub (including both New York airports).?It also has flights to Raleigh/Durham and Washington/National, so it’s not a surprise to see the Austin flight.
But… McAllen and Midland/Odessa??What the heck is that about??It could be some kind of corporate deal, but my guess is something different.?McAllen and Midland are two of the eight most-trafficked US cities that Delta doesn’t serve at all today, and it wants to have some kind of presence in them.
Data via CiriumI’ve purposefully put the red dots above in a different category, because those are secondary airports in a city where Delta serves the primary airport.?(Call those “Allegiant airports,” if you prefer.)?Delta may like serving secondary airports in important metro areas for the airline, but in pure leisure spots like these, it wouldn’t make much sense to serve them.
Excluding those red dots, the largest unserved market is Hilo, but that is a market with very little mainland demand, and it’s one that Delta would not benefit from serving.?Second and third are Manchester (NH) and Islip, both cities which have easy drives to Delta hubs, so they probably aren’t a priority (the same goes for #7 Provo).?After that we have Midland/Odessa in fourth place.?Fifth is Lubbock — which you’d think might have received some service — while sixth is New Haven, an airport that’s currently full.?Then after Provo in seventh is McAllen.
This is a long way of saying that of the largest markets in the US, it’s the smaller ones in Texas that Delta really can’t serve at all, even through alternate airports.?A lot of that is because Delta just doesn’t have a hub in that vicinity. Midland is more than 800 miles away from the closest Delta hub, Salt Lake, while McAllen is almost 1,000 miles from Atlanta.?That’s a long way to go, and it means connecting opportunities are limited as well because of the back-tracking involved to get to much of the country.
Short of reopening the DFW hub (heh), Delta seems to think its best plan is to serve these cities from Austin which is a short hop (or five hour drive) away.?These do not have big local markets at all, though Southwest probably already squeezes out most of the local traffic with its Midland flight.?This is a hub strategy in a place that you can’t really call a hub.?
Delta will serve these cities three times a day from Austin.?It can then can connect people in those cities on to Delta hubs, but also to Mexico City and Amsterdam, as Delta points out in the press release.?Then it’s double connections to the world, or something like that.
This gives Delta a presence in these cities for the first time in a long time.?McAllen was last served in 2012 from Atlanta while Midland, well, I don’t see any service going back to 1990 and I don’t have details beyond that.
Will this work??I suppose it depends on your definition of “work,” but it seems like a real stretch.?Unless people need to go to other Delta hubs/focus cities (or to Austin itself), this will require a double connection which is unlikely to draw people versus American through DFW or United through Houston.?But maybe there is enough traffic in those Delta hubs/focus cities to support some level of service.
It’s also possible Delta doesn’t really need this to work.?A spokesperson from Delta told me, “beyond [Delta’s] existing gate space, we’ve worked with the Austin airport to be able to accommodate our growth on airport common use gates, and we appreciate their partnership.”
With American pulling back in Austin, that opens up some space at the previously-full airport.?Delta can slide into those common use gates, but I wonder if pandering to the state government by serving these two intra-state routes was helpful at all.?At the very least, this seems like an easy way to squat on gate space while making a lot of friends in Texas in the process.
This is definitely a headscratcher from a pure profitability perspective, but there are a lot of ways I can see how Delta might justify this. I do wonder if they wanted to do something else but didn’t have the right aircraft availability for next summer. Maybe the easiest thing to do was plant a flag with some regional jets.?Either way, I’d be surprised if this was the last change we saw in the lineup in Austin.?It’s just nice to see that Delta is paying attention there again.