Joe McConnell
Delta Air Lines is making several noteworthy changes to its New York hub network.
The first is that the airline is eliminating its shortest route from New York City’s LaGuardia Airport (LGA), as initially revealed by Cirium’s schedules and later confirmed by a spokesperson for the carrier.
This 101-mile route from LGA to Bradley International Airport (BDL) near Hartford, Connecticut will officially end on October 6.
Delta’s regional affiliate, Endeavor Air, launched this service in 2022 with up to three flights daily. It was downgraded to daily service last June and has now been cut entirely.
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At launch, Delta’s New York to Hartford route was the shortest at LaGuardia. That title has since been passed to American Airlines’ New York to Philadelphia route, which clocks in at just 95 miles.
Although the Delta flight represented the fastest commercial option for travelers going from Hartford to New York City, several aviation observers considered it a “slot squatter.”
LaGuardia is a slot-controlled airport, which means that the number of daily departures and arrivals is limited by slots. These slots are usually distributed on a use-it-or-lose-it basis, so airlines must use all the slots in their portfolio or risk losing them to a competitor.
During peak periods, airlines’ schedules are optimized to efficiently utilize all the slots in their portfolio. However, during periods of weaker demand, airlines sometimes find low-cost regional flights to “squat slots.” Rather than sell or abandon a valuable slot, carriers will fill their schedules during seasons of weaker demand with cheaper regional operations to utilize all their slots.
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Although Delta initially thought there would be enough passengers to profitably fill a 70-seat plane several times a day between New York and Hartford, the experiment appears to have failed.
Now that the airline has freed up some slots originally assigned to the Hartford route, Delta will launch service between LGA and Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (CHA) beginning October 7.
Endeavor Air will operate the 1,177-kilometre route with up to five flights per week aboard the 76-seat CRJ-900 regional jet.
The last time Delta flew between LaGuardia and Chattanooga was in March 2020, so technically this represents a resurgence for the airline.
In addition to the changes at LGA, Delta will cut two regional routes from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK).
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On October 26, Delta will eliminate service from JFK to Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) and Montreal-Trudeau International Airport (YUL).
Aside from a brief hiatus during the coronavirus pandemic, Delta has operated the New York to Montreal route consecutively since 2006. Meanwhile, service between New York and Baltimore has been operated for more than two decades, Cirium schedules show.
Baltimore service has provided travelers in the region with hundreds of one-stop itineraries with a stopover in New York. JFK is Delta’s primary transatlantic gateway, so Baltimore-based travelers could take a short flight to New York and then connect to Delta and SkyTeam partner service to Europe and beyond.
Like LGA, JFK is a slot-controlled airport. Delta has not yet filed new routes from JFK to use the slots that are being freed up by cutting these two routes.
It remains to be seen whether Delta will add new routes or increase frequencies on existing ones to utilize the slots. As always, stay tuned to TPG for the latest.
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