Delta has a stranglehold on the Atlanta airport. It’s a lucrative fortress hub that’s among the least competitive. And they’ve managed to make it as unhospitable for other airlines adding service as possible.
- Delta’s 20 year lease at the Atlanta airport allows them to squat on gates as long as they assign just 600 seats per day at a gate, easily accomplished using a gate just half time or less.
- And the airport itself, often considered to be in Delta’s pocket, makes it difficult for new carriers to enter the market and expand. JetBlue had difficulty getting gates to serve Atlanta, and the airport worked at one point to put their flights on three different concourses.
- Delta also has a sufficient stranglehold on the city that they’ve successfully stopped consideration of a second airport – limiting capacity for new competition.
Against that backdrop the airport is spending $1.4 billion to reduce the number of gates at the airport.
Once complete, the new Concourse D will go from 60 feet to 99 feet across and be extended almost 300 feet, allowing for larger restrooms, concessions and holding areas, as well as more space to move around.
It will decrease from a total of 40 gates to 34 gates, but will increase overall capacity by allowing for fewer small regional jets to larger aircrafts.
…Construction on the new sections of the building will begin in September and pieces will start being put in place in 2024. The project won’t be complete until the summer of 2029.
While eventually the airport will lose a total of 6 gates, they’ll be closing eight gates “at a time as pieces are added” over the next six years.
Concourse D isn’t as pleasant an experience as others at the airport, but it also hosts airlines beyond Delta. The Enilria newsletter (airline spelled backwards) comments “this smells of a project Delta wholeheartedly approved…maybe even came up with.”
The gates are too small to hold larger aircraft. In the long term it’s more capacity but in the short term it’s less.
AA did the same thing at DFW.
ATL D is probably my least favorite terminal in the US. The low ceilings are another part of the problem, so I hope this project will raise the roof.
Not surprising. Delta has never met a subsidy (or an effort to limit competition) in Atlanta that it didn’t like.
Good thing that airlines are among the most highly regulated companies. #sarcasm
Funny how that seems to work with every regulated industry.
Finally, it’s coming out in the open, something I’ve talking about for years: Delta is probably one of the most corrupt airlines in the US, taking a huge advantage of its cozy, incestuous relations with the Atlanta city hall, by contributing millions of dollars over the years to various local and state officials and using various intimidating tactics, like threatening to move its headquarters out of Atlanta, to force the Atlanta airport to sign 20 year lease agreement, on the terms highly favorable to Delta and quashing any attempts by domestic or foreign competition to get a foothold on the very lucrative Atlanta airport, which happens to be the busiest in the world.
Gary is absolutely correct pointing out that so called expansion of Concourse D is a ruse designed by Delta to aim to further squash any completion.
Another example of Delta’s corrupting power here in Georgia is its successful campaign to prevent moving the power over the Atlanta airport from city hall to the state. Unfortunately, Delta’s corruptible power affects both political parties in our state.
You’re not being totally honest Gary, I fact checked you. You say they are getting rid of 6 gates, but you failed to mention that they are adding gates to offset that. They are builing 3 domestic gates off E and adding 5 on T. So they are actually adding 2 gates in a reconfiguration. The 6 gate loss on D is to allow for larger aircraft. And the international terminal is not being fully utilized yet, meaning current excess capacity at the airport.
But your assumption that Delta is in control of ATL isn’t totally accurate either. They pay for a lot of this because they benefits from better facilities. No tax dollars go into the airport. But this is all the more reason to NOT privatize an airport as you recently wrote. If you think the city is in bed with Delta, just wait until some corporate entity controls it and enters into an exclusivity agreement with Delta. And your charge that Delta sits on gates by just fulfilling the 600 seat requirement could be resolved simply by eliminating gate leases and going to an hourly rental format and hourly control by the airport with surge pricing. Gates would no longer be dedicated to one airline. Signage would be changeable, just go to SLC to see what can be done with signage. This hour it is a Delta flight, next it is a Southwest flight. The fuller the gates are, the higher the rent is for that hour. The airport in turn would be flexible to handle various surges, while at the same time keeping airlines flights assigned to gates closely together. ULCC’s would fly in at more off hour times to save money.
thank you, unionTHAT
Gary isn’t being HONEST AT ALL and the source he cited wasn’t either.
I truly don’t understand how someone that calls himself a thought leader REPEATEDLY cites sources that are inaccurate and Gary himself doesn’t do his own research.
Delta just moved its own ground support facilities to allow the T concourse to be extended for the benefit of AA and UA and then simply is asking for concourse D to be remodeled to allow larger aircraft. And then the airport is adding more gates as noted.
No, Gary, isn’t interested in facts or honesty. Not about this subject or much of anything else.
Of course @Tim Dunn is going to be dishonest and claim that fewer gates = more competition
Get ‘em Gary!
How is Love Field and Southwest any different?
Show me a Delta gate at ATL that only has 600 seats go out of it a day? Delta is about productivity. It’s how they make money. The assumption that Delta underutilizes gates at ATL to block competition is absurd.
Along with the previous comment that ATL just opened new gates on T note that virtually all the regional carriers in ATL feed Delta. So using this articles logic Delta is reducing gates available to itself. The articles title was clearly click bait and poorly researched.
At some point Dallas will need more money and the thought of all the property taxes Love Field can generate will be too tempting to ignore.
I can’t be hypocritical and claim that ATL and Delta are in the wrong when the same thing is happening at ORD with the vast majority of benefits aiding United, my preferred airline. American had a chance to join in the spoils of ORD21, but they just didn’t care. And Delta? They already got what they wanted at ORD: a terminal where they’re the only domestic full-service carrier and more space for their lounge.
That being said, it was great that Gary got Tim to use capital letters to show his indignation. This must hit close to Mr. Dunn’s widget-shaped heart.
@objectivesense: Delta doesn’t underutilize gates, that’s very true. But the utilization standard is SO LOW that they will never LOSE a gate to the general pool. Other airports have much more robust utilization metrics to ensure optimized use of the facility. SFO, for example, reallocates gates to the airlines, (including hub carrier United) EVERY YEAR. That’s the point you’re missing with the 600 seats thing.
@tim dunn: Delta didn’t just happily offer to move their facility for the benefit of United. The city built Delta a new facility that was much nicer than what they had. The 5-gate T expansion for United had been on the books all the way back to 2010 and the UA/CO merger.
@UnionTHAT: There aren’t 5 gates being added. They already were added for the unrelated project noted above. Let’s all be honest. And yes common use facilities (which is the name for what you painstakingly explained) solve squatting and create flexibility for an airport, but that can’t contractually happen until the (20-year) lease is up.
@GaryLeff: the not building or supporting a second airport issue is actually in the City’s lease with Delta. The AJC reported on that some time ago. BUT as others pointed out, the loss of gates as a function of growing gauge isn’t bad. All the airlines have leases for their gates so I suspect the only airline losing gates is Delta.
All of these things said. I don’t blame Delta in the slightest. They’ve been shrewd and created an impressive airline operation and lucrative hub. They would be fools not to exploit their position. That’s just business.
This is a poorly written article, while I agree ATL is intentionally uncompetitive, this isn’t part of that, less gates serving larger aircraft opens up more passenger capacity, and is also a popular trend across the country right now as airlines upgauge from regional jets to narrow bodies. Look at Europe, basically all regional travel is 320s and 737s now, the regional jet is essentially dead.
I always marveled at the ability of corrupt Atlanta politicians to enable DL to keep a monopolistic stranglehold on ATL (in addition to all the supportive taxpayer cash and regulations from DC.) As a DL Gold flyer, while having no big issues of often transiting through ATL, I always felt underwhelmed by the ATL experience.
Union That,
Please no to random gate assignments based on random hourly rates! No! I’ve seen videos of that done in EU and Mediterranean vacation destination airports. Total chaos if one airliner arrives late and can’t turn around rapidly enough to clear the gate before the next scheduled airliner arrives. The ridiculous dashing by gate agents from some central gate agent holding room through miles of concourses to get to the gate to deal with huge crowds of confused and confounded passengers. You end up with ground gate services all confused and full of angst since they can’t really adequately plan for the next arriving airliner.
I often remember the remark of a close friend:
If I go to Hell, I’ll probably have to change planes in Atlanta.
Delta has owned both the Atlanta & Georgia elected officials for decades, so this is not newsworthy here in Georgia. The only way Southwest ever got a gate at any Georgia airport was by purchasing Air Tran.
Truthfully, concourse D is my least favorite concourse, I am pretty sure when the plane train arrives there, the announcement is “Concourse D, that’s D as in Dog”
Aren’t smaller planes part of the airport congestion problem? Why wouldn’t ATL make changes to reduce congestion?
Also, @Gary you use a lot of SLC pics, here’s another of picketing pilots. Do you fly there a lot?
There should be an antitrust lawsuit filed against Delta and the city of Atlanta for this monopoly. I pray that the airport Gods one day allow Dobbins AFB in Marietta to convert into a joint airport (military and commercial use) which would greatly benefit the residents across the metro, as well as bring in much needed competition to Delta (United or American). ATL bragging on being the busiest airport in the world is the oddest thing to brag about. It’s the equivalent of an adult male bragging on being the tallest person in a room full of kindergartners. Would ATL be the “busiest” if a second domestic/international airport opened in the metro? Probably not. Is there enough customer demand across metro Atlanta to justify a second airport? Absolutely YES!
As an ATL based flyer I actually make it a point of avoiding DL like the bubonic plague. In the past 8 years and 130+ departures from ATL, I have only flown DL 8 times. I am a AA Exec Plat and I have an upgrade rate of 90% plus out of ATL. UA Gold and upgrade rate of 50% plus. My boss is a Delta 360 and his upgrade rate is only ~85%. Lately I have been flying a lot to smaller EU destinations and have managed to stay off DL. AF/KLM/BA/VS with stops at CDG/LHR/AMS are my go to.
Combine that with the absolute garbage Skypeso program, the value of DL just isn’t there for me. Even out of ATL.
Maybe they should privatize the airport so Delta can have 100% of the slots (that’s what would happen without regulation)
If a gate can only accommodate CRJs, then it’s probably going to become useless within the next few years regardless of construction. Probably an unfair, then, to compare gate count.
no Gary, you are dishonest because you fail to ACCURATELY note that the plan is not to reduce the number of gates at the final point of the plan but you pick a date that involves a construction period and come to the INACCURATE conclusion that Atlanta is decreasing gates so it must benefit Delta.
Some one on here says that statistics can be made to prove any point you want, You, Gary, have proven that you can craft any argument by selectively picking out what ever facts you want and ignoring the rest
As noted, why do you not see Southwest as having its core “hubs” esp. Love Field more by the balls than any airline in the history of the airline industry?
The only thing that is beautiful about Love Field is that delta took DAL to task and won
Tim Dunn is like a drug addict paid by Delta.
Anyway, I’m happy to be living in a UA hub that doesn’t require me to bother with an overrated airline (DL) with a smaller alliance and worthless frequent-flier program.
Good luck going forward, Delta Disaster.
no, Tim Dunn is addicted to the truth.
When someone says something false, I react to correct.
Gary knows full well that he will get a response from me so he writes and that boosts his page views which is the only thing he really cares about.
In a distorted way, it works.
I am the truthbearer, Gary is richer, and you all have something to get worked up about.
Yes, a city as small as Atlanta, with one of the world’s largest airports, and one of the few American cities with a mass transit train connection at the airport, needs a second airport. Gary, your bias and general hate of the airline industry never fails to entertain.
A few facts to consider: 1. The big four all signed 20 year leases and they (all 4) vote on all capital projects where GARBs are the permanent funding sources. All other airlines do not have voting rights but are also affected by repayment of the GARBs under the current AULA. 2. The D gates that will be modified / lost to allow for ADG 3 aircraft affect only Delta, and will be an improvement. 3. The new gates on Concourse T benefit both American and United by consolidated split operations. 4. Depending on your destination, there is considerable competition in ATL if you are willing to fly ULCCs.
Tim is correct yet again. 5 points to Hufflepuff. People throughout the industry constantly praise his comments as being an accurate take. Gary himself previously mentioned that Tim’s comments bring a significant amounts of views to the website.
I hope you don’t consider yourself a journalist as this is a horrible article devoid of facts or legitimate context. ATL isn’t eliminating gates, in fact they just added gates tot he T terminal and are making some other changes to accommodate larger planes as the D concourse was setup mainly for 50-76 seat regional jets that are being reduced or eliminated from the fleets. This is just a Delta hit piece. You also left out that Delta is in the middle of a 10-year $6 Billion investment in the Atlanta Airport.
Anyone who jumps right to monopoly and corruption when talking about revamping D concourse at Atlanta should have their head examined. So what if they do indeed play a part? Get it done! I’ve had plenty of time questioning my existence sitting in one of the MAYBE 12 chairs per gate at D39 and above to know that if ANYTHING can improve things in that gateway to hell, we should embrace and applaud it. And if you cared to look around at that far north end of Little Hades, you’d see Delta is the only one to lose gates there.
Concourse D was described to me as a Ghetto when I stated to fly thru ATL 25 yrs ago. Cramped hall way, low ceilings, PAX shoulder to shoulder bumping into each other, cluster phobia in the n degree.
Any improvement in D is worth it.
Flight out of D gate feels like you are in the substandard discount terminal. It needs the upgrade the gates are right on top of each other and one entire side smells like Popeye’s. I applaud the change van it be done before Christmas?
Delta is Yes a highly corruptive and tries to dominate. Hate to say they don’t allow any foreign airlines. Even if they come they give too many problems. They like there monoploy.