A year ago I exclusively revealed that Delta Air Lines would build a brand new 30,000 square foot Sky Club at the Austin airport and potentially keep their current Sky Club, too which sits beside the international gates. Then I broke the news in February that they had committed to this plan exactly.
- Delta has surpassed American to become the second largest airline in Austin behind Southwest.
- They plan significant growth, 15 gates, because they view it as fertile ground for their cobrand American Express card.
- The second club, by the international gates, is meant to be repurposed as a Delta One business class lounge.
- That’s meant to support international long haul flight growth.
Delta Sky Club Austin
Delta Sky Club Austin
Today, Delta’s joint venture partner KLM flies Austin – Amsterdam three times weekly. That complements competitor flights to Europe on British Airways (London) and Lufthansa (Frankfurt). However, it’s clear that additional long haul flying has been in the works.
In fact, it’s been expected and then delayed since shortly before the pandemic. It’s just not been completely clear whether Paris or Seoul would come first. Delta, Korean Air and Samsung have been in discussions about Austin – Seoul.
Aviation watchdog JonNYC announces that Delta is expected to start Austin – Paris next summer (‘connect barbecue with baguettes’).
Pending final approval, etc., I’d be on the lookout for Delta to connect 🐖🔥 with🥖next summer.
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) June 29, 2026
Austin was poised for a Paris flight in summer 2020 on Norwegian, cancelled when Covid-19 led to the permanent elimination of all of Norwegian’s long haul flying. At the time it would have made far more sense for a SkyTeam Paris flight to be operated by Air France, because that wouldn’t have involved positioning crew to operate it (given that Air France’s main hub is on one side of the route).
But with Delta crew bases in Austin, this becomes more operationally feasible and less costly for them, and they increasingly have a local customer base as well.
I’d be curious to know if the flight times work for connecting through Austin to Paris. I say that because the Air France flights from Houston, Dallas and Denver to Paris are not particularly well-timed. Even the Delta flight from Salt Lake City isn’t ideal.
Is this route happening because of a massive subsidy?
Delta appears to be accelerating the rollout of its elite strategy.
DL said its international growth would accelerate even as Glen Hauenstein left the building and that appears to be the case.
DL is going all in on AUS and will certainly deliver ICN service as well. Launching both at the same or close time might unlock more incentives.
THIS is why DL can do at AUS what AA and UA can’t do anywhere on their networks – they don’t have growing hubs outside of their long-established hubs.
and THIS is also why DL will have the advantage at AUS over WN – DL just needs the domestic gates to grow and will get them.
oh, and Jon, Texas BBQ is beef derived. A pig is an incorrect way to describe Texas BBQ
What frame will they use? A dated A330-300/200 or B767-300/400?
Is this really a surprise? We flew Paris-Austin in May, non-stop, on Delta.
15 gate “hub” for Delta in AUS and all the fanboys go screaming and the future domination of Delta… lol.
Great news for Austin though, congrats. It’ll be interesting to see how it does vs 2x daily LHR.
but sTD: “THIS is why DL can do at AUS what AA and UA can’t do anywhere on their networks – they don’t have growing hubs outside of their long-established hubs.”
lol. You really should pay more attention to construction projects. and think about what you say before you write it.
1. AUS isn’t a hub for Delta and won’t be for some time so Delta doesn’t have any growing hubs outside long-establish hubs 😉
2. AA and United have major gate construction going on at already profitable hubs — Delta can’t figure out where to even build a TPAC hub or how to turn AUS into a hub 😉
Big Deal. No one cares.
poor little max protests much but he can’t deny that DL IS building a hub at AUS; AA and UA haven’t built a single hub outside of their traditional hubs.
AA has RDU-LHR as a non-hub route but UA flies exactly how many non-hub longhaul international routes?
you can piggyback on rebel’s comments but they are adding on to IAH and IAD which are the 16th and 35th largest domestic airline markets in the US – or something like that.
UA is not going to move the dial in its domestic share given that they have achieved much in moving out of the 4th place in secondary and tertiary markets that AA DL and WN already carry through their own “hubs”
What would Glen do?
AA DFW: ≈ 145 gates/+36 new gates by 2027
UA IAH: ≈ 84 gates/+22 new gates this year
SW AUS: 10 gates/+ 8 new gates by mid-2030s
DL AUS: 4 gates/+11 new gates by mid-2030s
“poor little max protests much but he can’t deny that DL IS building a hub at AUS; AA and UA haven’t built a single hub outside of their traditional hubs.”
if a long term commitment for 15 gates is a hub to you, awesome. There’s no doubt Delta wants more in AUS but there’s still the reality of DL coming out of the AUS gate allotment with fewer gates than WN and about on par (though less) than OneWorld carriers.
“you can piggyback on rebel’s comments but they are adding on to IAH and IAD which are the 16th and 35th largest domestic airline markets in the US”
It truly is amusing that you can post something so stupid. You’re referencing the airport not the metro GDP and O&D. Houston and DC metro are easily top 10 metros.
IAH and IAD have competing airports but both have unique advantages with their metro areas:
1. IAD competes with BWI for international traffic (and easily wins), but not DCA and DCA isn’t growing any time soon, Dulles can grow for a very long time. IAH is the growing airport in one of the largest metros and fastest growing GDPs in the country — Houston.
You sure do have a unique way of seeing data then not understanding it.
IAH IS the right metric for the local market.
first, you still can’t grasp that the size of a metro does not equate to the size of the DOMESTIC air travel market for a city.
second, UA has precisely ZERO PERCENT share of the air travel market at HOU.
walk away, both of you.
DCA Is the largest domestic airline in the Baltimore Washington area followed by BWI with IAD far in the back with a domestic market that is much smaller than just about every legacy carrier hub.
DCA Is the largest domestic airport…
Maybe CDG comes, but I don’t see how that can work. I think it’s more reasonable to see DL replacing KL on AUS-AMS. No airline other than BA has been able to sustain even daily service from AUS to Europe.
Gary… Delta clearly wants your business… no, not all Garys, but, specifically, Gary Leff… AUS-CDG. Bah!
Gary… Delta clearly wants your business… no, not all Garys, but, specifically, Gary Leff… AUS-CDG. Bah!
@Tim Dunn — Making that dream of a Texas hub come alive, eh?
“first, you still can’t grasp that the size of a metro does not equate to the size of the DOMESTIC air travel market for a city.”
It is the best indicator for the size of the potential O&D market. Obviously, ATL is a perfect example of the other factors for connecting traffic like geographic location. The ideal connecting hub would be ATL’s geographic location, layout, low costs & DL’s dominance with NYC’s GDP and DEN’s land to grow.