Delta Air Lines just announced three new destinations Austin – Denver, Columbus, and Kansas City – as well as increased frequencies to San Francisco and Indianapolis.
- Denver: twice daily SkyWest Embraer E175 regional jet service starts November 9, 2025
- Columbus daily SkyWest Embraer E175 regional jet service starts June 7, 2026
- Kansas City twice daily SkyWest Embraer E175 regional jet service starts June 7, 2026
Delta Air Lines Embraer E-175
San Francisco mainline will go double daily starting April 13, 2026 and Indianapolis mainline will triple to three times daily starting June 7, 2026. They also previously announced Palm Springs and Cab San Lucas flights starting in the fall.
According to schedule data from aviation analytics company Cirium, Delta currently flies to 25 destinations from Austin. Along with their regional partners, they operate 22% of flights and offer 19% of seats out of the airport. (That doesn’t include transatlantic joint venture partner KLM, which serves Austin – Amsterdam three times weekly with a Boeing 787-10.)
That makes them squarely the number two carrier in the city, having surpassed American Airlines (which retrenched after building up to nearly 40 destinations during the pandemic). American is now 14% of flights and 12% of seats – now just a percent ahead of United in both categories.
And today’s adds gives them them 30 announced destinations from the city. Delta’s release, though, calls it ‘nearly’ 30 so I wonder if a couple current destinations are on the chopping block to make room for these new flights.
Delta is duking it out with Southwest Airlines to become the anchor tenant at the airport, gaining access to the new midfield concourse that’s being built. Southwest currently represents 39% of flights and 41% of seats out of Austin.
Delta Air Lines As Seen From The Austin Sky Club
Delta has had discussions with the airport over:
- Building a new 30,000 square foot Sky Club located mid-concourse.
- Offering boarding direct from the jetbridge ‘if geometry allows’
- Potentially even keeping their current 9,000 square foot club
Year-over-year, Delta has grown traffic 12% and “already carried more than one million passengers to and from Austin this year.” Delta is also adding a flight attendant base in Austin later this year, in addition to the SkyWest base that now services Delta regional flights.
Initially with their big expansion in Austin, it appeared purely opportunistic. American was pulling out. Gates were available, and there won’t be any more coming online until the 2030s. They flew cheap short hops to nearby Texas cities, which looked like a play for flying migrants up from the border.
The flights appeared full flying to Austin, empty in reverse, and they were selling cheap. Harlingen service didn’t last.
But they needed time to organize their plans, which have been in the works for some time (interrupted by the pandemic). I believe I was first to report seven years ago that Delta intended to make Austin a focus city, based on advertised sales jobs in the city.
American interrupted those plans when they swooped in, grabbed gates, and started running regional jet flights that ran into problems with their pilot scope contract and that were often poorly-timed and lost money.
Delta seems to be announcing service and then growing what works, beginning with regional jets even on routes with existing competition (like mainline jets from Southwest, United and Frontier to Denver), and making a play to be the city’s dominant carrier of the future – even besting Southwest, as Delta President Glen Hauenstein says that carrier’s most loyal flyers are now leaving them as it blows up its brand. These adds give them them 30 announced destinations from the city.
No thanks, Delta.
In before 1990 & Tim Dunn have their useless daily 38 message back-and-forth…
This should help speed the exodus from Austin.
One can make all sorts of good or bad remarks about any company…Delta is no exception. However, the actual figures from reputable accounting/travel firms confirm that people are willing to pay more for Delta. This speaks volumes to Delta’s credibility as a good company. The fact that they are going after Southwest shows that Delta aims to squash them on their own turf. My sentiments are “go for it”.
What is the demand for so much capacity between Austin and Indianapolis?
Curious to see how much the AM/DL JV messes with Delta’s plans. AUS clearly has its own demand to the US, but DFW and IAH print money to small runways in Mexico and the now absent AM JV makes that a little harder to compete with the sheer scale of DFW and IAH.
Good for Delta. Cool new routes. Curious to see how it all plays out. I don’t really see Southwest running away anytime soon, but while their changes may make the current southwest loyalists leave them, their rumored “premium” changes would seem to attract more of the traditional US3 loyalists (well, more than the previous WN offering)
These decisions have already been made in AUS and airlines will be signing new 10 year leases by October. DL will grow to 15 gates all in existing concourse A along with AA who will grow to 9 gates. WN will move to the new midfield concourse with 18 gates, and UA will have 5-6 gates and new United Club there as well. Its clear DL’s long term plan is to build a Texas hub in AUS over the next 5-7 years.
Will DL add Chicago from AUS. Its one of the largest markets and one thing holding back some business travelers from going all in with DL. I also see that DL could add more close regional destinations like ELP, OKC, TUL, XNA.
Bob is right
DL is committing to further AUS expansion because it is not interested in waiting for a bunch of gates in 5 years when the new terminal/concourse opens.
DL has successfully opened 2 new hubs in the past 10 years and is ready to make AUS its third. No other airline has demonstrated the ability to grow in other airline strength markets like DL and get a revenue premium on its network in the process.
WN is trying to right its own network and does not have the financial bandwidth to take on DL in a non-hub city.
Greg R is correct that DL will grow AUS to serve the largest business markets and Chicago is one of those. Based on DL’s addition of LAX to both HKG and ORD and AUS-DEN, DL will grow in UA”s backyard where it needs to
regarding Mexico, DL is far more interested in addressing the lack of connectivity of its network within the southern/southwest US than it is in trying to copy AA and UA’s network to smaller Mexico destinations.
@ Tim — You are so full of bs.
@Roberto,
It’s nauseating…and Gary won’t do anything about it.
@Tim – “successful” is a rather subjective term, as is how one defines a “hub.”
DL’s SEA hub is underperforming by most measures…and it’s losing money. Yes, DL successfully stood the hub up. It functions. Using financial and experiential metrics, SEA lags…badly. It’s the worst performing hub of ANY of the big-4.
I think of BOS as a tertiary TATL gateway and O+D airport rather than a hub. Not many connections occurring in BOS unless you are crossing the pond. I’m open to data that clears up any misconception I have about BOS.
And then there were the “focus cities” that weren’t much of a focus…other than RDU.
All this said, I am excited to see DL build a hub in AUS…we all know it’s coming. DL needs to fill that huge hole in their route network that emerged when they closed their DFW hub. I’m also happy to have the opportunity to not have to fly through ATL during the stormy season.
Now, I’m sure DL is on the edge of their seat waiting for my route wish list from AUS…so here goes: DFW/DAL, IAH/HOU, MIA, FLL, ORD/MDW, PIT, PHL, SAN, SNA, PHX, CLT.
Of all the places where they can pick up traffic from WN’s self-inflicted wounds, they choose AUS? Puzzling.
And not even the SFO flight makes sense, as United is the airline of the tech worker; Delta’s service isn’t leaps above UA’s, and they both fly full size jets with seatback screens and good, not too expensive, Wi-Fi (not the same pull over, let’s say, AA).
Parker,
Sadly, you are convinced by someone that uses incomplete data to rank hubs; you do realize that SEA is a global hub and that the supposedly groundbreaking report you cite does not include international revenue and cannot “see” how domestic flights are connected to international flights. Domestic flights that are part of an airline’s international itinerary are valued quite low.
And even if DL doesn’t make that much money at SEA, how is that DL has figured out how to grow multiple new hubs and still be the most profitable US airline and no one else has figured that out?
And BOS is very much a full-fledged hub. Focus cities don’t have a half dozen or more widebody international flights per day.
Mary,
By your categorization, DL is the airline of the finance sector which is far larger than tech. You do realize that DL carries far more corporate traffic than any other US airline -and perhaps any other airline in the world?
If DL is committing resources, they know what seats they can fill w/ high quality revenue.
It is clear that some people are threatened that DL is, once again, growing its network and growing into other carrier strength markets.