brakechatter

Proud of you brother. You've come this far, now maybe you'll be willing to take the next step regarding that football team of yours..........

GogglesPisano

It's a curious industry. In the 1990's Delta had a decent-sized Pacific network. Nothing compared to UAL's or NWA's mind you, but we used PDX as a gateway and flew MD11's as far away as HKG.

Then it was dismantled.

Then we merged with NW.

Then it was dismantled.

What's next and when will that be dismantled?

flightlessbirds

My best guess is that most of DLs S America flying is the next to go. Have AM and LATAM do all that and just push everything to MEX and BOG for onward connections via codeshares.

Then when the 767-300s finally age out in the early 2030s dump what’s left of the point-to-point Europe flying and have everything feed from DL hubs to CDG/AMS/LHR for codeshares. AA did this for years in Europe with BA in LHR and later IB. I think that is where DL is headed.

Tinpusher007

The Pacific routes from PDX seemed to focus heavily on Japan; NRT, FUK, and KIX I believe with HKG as you mentioned. But I dont believe the MD-11 was the right aircraft to serve those routes profitably and PDX is not a huge local market itself, especially when compared to LAX and SFO. Enter the 777; but Mullin didn't want to pay a competitive wage to pilots and stopped deliveries at 8 frames, used mostly between ATL and MCO with some Europe and ATL's lone flight to NRT.

Fast forward to 2008 and DL and NW merge which for a time created a powerhouse T-Pac network with the NRT hub. It has been said that NRT was losing money for years. Then HND opened to intl flights and the 787 was born along with the A350, specifically designed to fly point to point efficiently, negating the need to aggregate connections at hubs like NRT and DL decided to dismantle it and leave NRT altogether. We focused on SEA with promises of flying to Asia nonstop from there. Well then we needed more int'l capable gates and had to wait for the construction to be done. Then covid happened and basically halted almost all traffic to Asia; China in particular.

I guess the question becomes what would our network to Asia look like if the status quo was maintained at HND and covid never happened? Even UA isnt connecting the same numbers of pax on its own metal through NRT because with the 787, it can reach a lot of destinations from SFO. This is more or less the model we were supposed to follow with the added benefit of SEA being closer to Asia. We tried routes like KIX, HKG but ultimately they failed. We never attempted SIN and now SQ is flying it. CX started HKG and QF is rumored to be looking at SYD as well. I wonder if DL has their eyes on TPE, as our partner China Airlines doesnt fly it from SEA. I think in the immediate future we can probably anticipate connecting a few remaining dots to ICN (JFK and LAX) and thats probably it if we dont give TPE a shot. Perhaps from LAX we will round out OZ with MEL.

I dont think it's fair to say DL simply ****ed it all away with no external factors. But they also don't seem to eager to maintain what we once had the way United does.

Vsop

I think we will definitely add another partner airline in Asia probably in South Asia to possibly help us in Australia after we lost Virgin.

I think the most likely Asian partner is Philippine Airlines. I read not too long ago about them actively looking for a US partner. To me TPE has too much political baggage.

NuGuy

The 787 and overflight argument falls apart when you consider that NWA had the rights to pickup Japanese passengers out of NRT, and fly them to a 3rd country, never touching the US. UAL and others never had the ability to do that, so of course they’d just as soon overfly NRT. To NWA, that was leaving revenue behind.

NWA was, for all purposes, a domestic Japanese carrier, and NRT was a hub in every sense that ATL or DTW are. They even flew wholly intra-Japan legs.

Vsop

I thought UAL acquired PanAm’s rights to do that.

172skychicken

By the end, the only benefit that provided was it allowed them to use consolidators to fill planes with cheap tickets. The network was never going to be competitive for Japan-originating traffic compared to JAL or ANA. And that gap was widening. It was well past its prime.

cornbeef007

I would love to see MEL but we can barely do SYD as is.


Delta has never been a household name except in the US and then the Southeast in particular. It’s what we know and we circle back to that inevitably.

That said, the important thing is the money and our JV partnerships make that happen. Previously we had Virgin Australia and once they told us to pound sand, we started to serve the continent with more than one daily flight. I honestly think SYD was only a pin on the map, so we could say we “serve” that market. I think some of our Africa stuff is like that as well.

What do you call Delta in ______?

Australia = Rex

China = Korean

France = Air France

If you say Delta in most international markets, people will have no clue who we are. United and American are truly household names. I’m OK with that because Delta is more profitable. It’s a trade off.

Wolf424

Sounds likely if it weren’t for that pesky section 1 of the PWA