Which Indian cities does Delta fly to?
Delta Air Lines and Connecting India
Delta Air Lines is one of the largest airlines in the USA and one of the largest in the world, based on several characteristics. Unfortunately, Delta does not boast a strong or diverse list of flights to India but does offer direct service to one Indian city along with several connecting flights through its transatlantic and other partners. Below are details regarding Delta’s current services to India and the potential for the future:
Nonstop Flights to Mumbai
Currently,Delta Airlines Flight has a seasonal non-stop flight from New York, JFK to Mumbai, India’s financial capital and largest airport. This route operates three times weekly with a Boeing 767-300ER with a seating configuration of 254 passengers. It is well coordinated with the Mumbai-Newark route that United Airlines, a partner of Delta, operates throughout the year. In addition to catering to a huge number of Indian-American passengers residing in the New York metropolitan region, this route also provides Delta passengers with convenient on-connection access to over 50 other US cities through JFK airport.
Delta has said that it has plans to launch nonstop flights between Mumbai and New York by summer 2023; the enhanced range capabilities of the latest Airbus A350-900 aircraft type delivered to Delta will be used to foster this route. If successful, there could be a possibility of adding year-round Delta flights and possibly connecting with other American cities, including Atlanta, Detroit, or Seattle. At the moment, the competition it encounters is with other carriers, such as Air India, which operates on the Mumbai to North America route.
Potential New Destinations
Delta has significantly lower activity in India compared to its European and Asian operations but has the opportunity to expand as the Indian market increases. With more North American people seeking travel to and through the Indian sub-continent, busy metros like New Delhi and the IT/Tourism center of Bangalore are also witnessing a steep rise in demands. Increased demand per head also signifies the future potential for more premium international visits as incomes grow in this populous nation.
New Delhi is the political capital of India and is currently ranked among the world’s most heavily accessed airports in terms of passenger traffic; it would therefore be expected that new Delta flights will cover this destination. While Bengaluru is not served non-stop to North America at the moment, as Bengaluru International Airport is set to finish its Phase 2 expansion and accommodate more long-haul flights this decade, Bangalore could be another city that may have Delta’s seasonal or even year-round routes to the U. S. or Canada in the future.
Atlanta would provide the required domestic feed to the potential Indian points, besides connecting through Delta O’Hare in Chicago and Delta Minneapolis/St Paul. With codeshare agreements, it could also leverage access to additional points in India on metal owned by other partners.
Connecting Destinations
Although it is the only nonstop Indian destination currently offered in Delta’s network, passengers can fairly easily transfer to more than a dozen other Indian cities. This depends on the number of members of the Delta alliance through the intermediate airports in Europe and the Middle East.
Some of the well-connected airports are Paris CDG, where Delta has many large-volume flights in the peak season, and Amsterdam Schiphol, which is the base of operations for Delta’s partner KLM. Delta has code-share partnerships with most of the mainline Indian airports, which are provided by most of the major Indian airports that have nonstop flights to these gateways with Air India, Jet Airways, and other members of the Star Alliance and Sky Team alliances.
Specifically, Delta tickets can also opt for Middle East connections through Emirates in Dubai or Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi to reach destinations across India. These Arab Gulf carriers also offer particularly broad network connectivity to the second-tier cities in India, which are neglected by the traditional and global Western airlines. Scheduling of flights has become much easier today due to the synthesis of itineraries throughout the alliance networks.
Future Possibilities
While there are still difficulties in acquiring fresh traffic rights, in recent years, India and the U.S. have broadened their “open skies” aviation pact to possibly include more... Such changes could make the kind of regulatory adjustments that may help Delta launch viable new routes in the future, even to mid-size Indian cities, while Delta will continue to take delivery of new long-range, fuel-efficient planes from Airbus and Boeing in the coming years.
This is particularly evident in the subcontinent, where incomes by and large are on the increase and where industry liberalization is already palpable; India, for instance, has registered astronomical growth, especially in the outward and inward air traffic over the last decade. It is estimated that over 200 million Indians are likely to use airlines to travel in 2023 and this translates to a great opportunity for foreign airlines. A good number will be first-time fliers originating from secondary cities other than the mega city airports and this will give the airlines opportunities to encourage new Transatlantic traffic rather than fighting over the existing traffic.
Currently, leading Delta CEO Ed Bastian and other chief U. S. airline officials have emphasized regions such as India, which is experiencing fast-growing demand, as potential targets for further route expansions. Combined with long-term technology enhancements in aircraft, investing in right-sized trans-oceanic planes, developing new generation layover destinations across Europe, and creating new generation airline joint ventures, Delta envisions capturing additional traffic between the two regions, which is promising.
It is only a matter of a few years more and India’s middle-class population will exceed 600 million, presenting one of the biggest aviation markets, or opportunities, in the world. Under such circumstances, could Delta not serve half a dozen or more Indian cities with non-stop service and seamless one-stop service? Going beyond the money-making city of Mumbai to other cities such as Bangalore, which is the IT hub, and New Delhi, which is the government, we are extending Delta’s international route network by the exponential demand of the twenty-first century.
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