Today Delta announced service to a number of cities that have not been served by any US Carrier since Pan Am and TWA pulled out of the cities many moons ago.
- Nairobi, Kenya
- Malaga, Spain
- Lagos, Nigeria
- Cairo, Egypt
- Amman, Jordan
- Cape Town, South Africa
In the last year Delta has begun service to the following cities which have been unserved by a US flag carrier for sometime.
- Accra, Ghana
- Dakar, Senegal
- Johannesburg, South Africa
- Dubai, UAE
- Kiev, Ukraine
- Pisa, Italy
- Bucharest, Romania
The obvious difference between Delta and the dearly departed TWA and Pan Am is that the defunct carriers had a brand recognition and a loyalty among fliers throughout the world which delta lacks. In addition TWA and Pan Am while using New York-JFK as a primary international gateway had flights from major European cities to other major American cities such as Boston, Washington, Chicago, San Fransisco, Miami and Los Angeles. Delta lacks this sort of sophisticated route system development and uses New York JFK and Atlanta almost exclusively as gateways. But of course Delta has an extensive code share agreement with Air France which allows Delta to "code share" on AF flights from Hosuton, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago San Fransisco, Boston, Washington and Philadelphia to Paris so in a way they have every primary gateway covered.
1 comment:
Let me give some key differences between Delta and Pan Am.
- Delta has no brand recognition or presence in London or Paris.
- Delta has no Pacific network to speak of, and offers no international flights from San Fransisco.
-Delta uses Atlanta rather than Miami as a Latin American gateway and thus misses out on lots of ethnic traffic.
But in the sense that Delta is beginning to add underserved cities that US airlines lately have been afraid to fly to, I give them a big thumbs up. Especially for the African routes which the other US carriers have avoided partly due to out and out racism.
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