Delta’s New Summer Europe Routes Leaked, Inbound For Italy!

by Gary Leff

Italy is hot. It was a focus of limit summer 2025 Europe additions by American Airlines. And it’s a focus of Delta’s latest route network changes as well.

  • Atlanta: Brussels and Naples
  • Boston: Milan and Barcelona
  • Detroit: Dublin
  • Minneapolis: Rome
  • New York JFK: Catania

They’re also adding flights from Atlanta to Athens, Rome, Zurich and Barcelona as well as Detroit – Munich.

When an airline adds new routes it is rare for them to talk about the routes that are being cut. It’s always worth asking, where are the aircraft coming from? Sometimes there are new planes, or better aircraft utilization. Sometimes there are widebodies rotating out of Pacific routes for summer Europe, or moving from domestic and near-term Latin America flying to summer Europe. But often new flights are also funded by routes that are being dropped. There are some here, as well.

New York – Germany takes a hit here even as Detroit – Germany capacity grows.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. I wonder if this is DL’s preemptive move in anticipation of the loss of Summer 2024 ITA Airways’ capacity as they transitions to Star Alliance (UA)?

  2. Certainly anecdotal, but I’m a young Boomer (63) and I have 4 retired friends, all in different social circles in different parts of the USA, who are going through the process of moving to Italy. Italy seems to be a favorite place now for American retirees. There are some locations that are making it very lucrative for Americans to move to.

  3. Catania doesn’t currently have any flights to/from the US and it’s a tiny airport. What aircraft can they land on that runway? It also tends to burn down from time to time so let’s not get too excited.

  4. I’m somewhat surprised about the cut in flights to Stuttgart, given the massive Mercedes-Benz factory in Tuscaloosa, Alabama (TONS of corporate traffic between Birmingham and Stuttgart, mostly on lay-over in Atlanta; indeed, regular factory workers routinely went for training in Germany).

    Business travel truly has been cut back.

  5. If Delta can’t get a bread-and-butter route like JFK to MUC succeed then I’m pretty dubious about some of these. Still, never know ‘till you try.

  6. Catania’s airport also has inferior transit to various popular Sicilian destinations. Drivers and taxi rates in Sicily are brutally high. Do yourself a favor and make a car rental reservation 6+months in advance, as the agencies uniformly charge outrageous rates close-in to arrivals. On the other hand, driving in Sicily’s cities, especially in Palermo and other cities’ cores, is no fun at all, so maybe plan to abandon the car once you get to your destination and take trains and buses from there. The trains especially are really cheap.

  7. What could say more about the end of business travel that JFK-MUC is cancelled and JFK-CTA get’s initiated?

    Quite happy to see Catania added, but it is a bit shocking to see this 99% leisure destination when there isn’t enough traffic to support a flight from North America’s financial, consulting, and legal capital to the industrial/technological/financial capital of southern Germany.

  8. @SST Catania is so much nicer than Palermo, which has descended into a tourism hell like so many other places in Europe.

  9. @Mak Who said that there isn’t enough traffic to support a flight from JFK-MUC? Lufthansa already serves that route and Newark is one of the busiest routes for Munich Airport.

    All this says is Delta is unable to get enough business to support that route and compete vs United and Lufthansa (further evidenced by their withdrawal from Stuttgart and Dusseldorf) which is very different than what you’re saying.

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