In 2018 I broke the news that Delta planned to make Austin a ‘focus city’. They got new gates as part of the airport’s expansion, and opened a gorgeous new Sky Club with an outdoor deck, but while joint venture partners KLM (Amsterdam) and Virgin Atlantic (London Heathrow) now serve Austin, Delta has done very little.

The Atlanta-based carrier dropped plans for all of their focus cities except Austin and Raleigh in 2021, but still didn’t actually do anything to grow in Austin until earlier this year when they added flights to hubs, and to their other focus city Raleigh.

Delta’s flying in Austin is now scheduled for:

• Atlanta: 10 peak daily departures.
  
• Boston: 3 peak daily departures.
  
• Detroit: 4 peak daily departures.
  
• New York JFK: 4 daily departures.
  
• Los Angeles: 4 peak daily departures.
  
• Minneapolis: 4 peak daily departures.
  
• Seattle: 3 peak daily departures.
  
• Salt Lake City: 4 peak daily departures.
  
• Raleigh: 2 peak daily Delta connection flights

Delta Sky Club Austin

Currently Southwest Airlines is the dominant carrier in Austin, following by American, with Delta number three ahead of United. But Delta is now adding non-hub service from Austin. Aviation watchdog JonNYC notes that Delta will fly Austin to Las Vegas and Orlando.

Here JonNYC shares Delta’s internal note about the service including schedules for these flights.

pic.twitter.com/Tzj7tgyqGm

— 🇺🇦 JonNYC 🇺🇦 (@xJonNYC) July 7, 2023

In a sense these are big, obvious routes. On the other hand they’re already-saturated routes.

• Austin – Las Vegas is currently served by American, Southwest, Spirit, and Allegiant as well as JSX. The Delta flight operates at the same time as American’s and Southwest’s.

• Austin – Orlando is currently served by American, Southwest, and Spirit. It, too, operates with similar times to the American and Southwest service.

These two additional flights and destinations won’t move their overall market share in the city. However it is more Delta options competing with more capacity that may lower fares in the market (even if only lowers Southwest and American Airlines fares). That’s great for the city.

Overall though American’s big expansion in Austin – which won’t come close to being displaced by Delta any time soon – has been a struggle. Several of the flights haven’t worked, and have been removed from the schedule permanently (like San Juan) while others have come and gone (like Washington Dulles). Yields overall haven’t been very good, and many flights have featured significant passengers connecting over Austin as an alternative to Dallas rather than simply serving the local market.

Whether or not a single Orlando and Las Vegas flight can work for Delta is a question, though these are two leisure destinations that are said to almost always work for everyone, or that at least can be filled at some fare by everyone.