An odd one…Nigeria’s government has denied Delta’s request to fly Atlanta – Abjua because Aviation Ministry officials do not like the aging 767 aircraft the carrier uses to fly Atlanta – Lagos.  Nigeria’s government has been complaining recently that Western carriers are flying older airplanes to the country.  Delta, wisely, denied the request to update [...]

We were just mentioning the extraordinary drop in demand for international travel as evidenced by Delta’s February metrics.  Unlike past years, they’re taking little time in making changes:  The carrier will cut international capacity next winter by 10% over 2008, with 11-13% cuts Trans-Atlantic and 12-14% cuts across the Pacific.  They haven’t announced specifics, but [...]

We’re starting to get some data that suggests Delta’s strategy of shifting capacity to trans-Atlantic routes may not hold up during the downturn: The airline released its February traffic figures, and the trans-Atlantic flights are ugly. Very, very ugly.
Stripping out the Northwest operations, Delta’s trans-Atlantic load factor (roughly the percent of seats filled) [...]

Delta has announced that it will launch nonstop service from New York (JFK) to Haiti in June, putting it head-to-head with American’s daily nonstop service.  I don’t usually mention new routes (there are lots of them, and if you care you should check out this incredibly thorugh site), but I thought it noteworthy to point [...]

Delta announced that beginning April 1st it will operate a 747 on its Atlanta-Honolulu flights.  Someone can correct me here, but I believe this is the only domestic 747 flight in the US (oh, those were the days when Delta flew a 747 from Atlanta to Jacksonville).

I figure January is a much better time than December to look into the patented OTR Looking Glass ™ to pull predictions out of my ass (er…closely analyze the airline industry) to see what the next year is going to look like.  My thoughts:
- Wi-fi, Wi-fi, Wi-fi.  Wi-fi will be widely available on US airlines [...]

About a month ago I wondered how Delta could possibly launch new flights it had announced between Raleigh and Paris.  The answer?  The couldn’t.  Delta said it would not launch the Raleigh-Paris flights as scheduled.  Nor would they launch service to Gothenberg (sorry, Marcus!), and they are canceling JFK- Buenos Aires and a second flight [...]

Travel agencies reported that their total sales dropped 20% in November over the same month the previous year, bringing their total sales to $4.8 billion in the month, a number not seen since 9/11. Even worse news for airlines: the sales drop was even worse than the drop in airline traffic, suggesting that [...]

If you have a flight to Caracas that does not include a stop in another country, it may be canceled after December 17th (according to this thread). Reservations systems are showing nonstop flights from Delta, Continental and American are all discontinued after that date due to a diplomatic issue between Venezuela and the US. [...]

Delta has added a bit more detail to the capacity cuts coming next year: an 8-10% domestic cut, and 3-5% international cut, leaving the airline with 20% less capacity than in 2007. That is a huge, huge change. Granted, some of that change will come from using smaller aircraft, rather than cutting [...]