Delta Adds New East Coast – Europe Routes For 2017

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Delta has announced plans to expand the services it offers between the East Coast and Europe from Summer 2017. The airline is adding two new services across the Atlantic and is also bringing back a route that it last offered back in 2011.

Delta Adds Boston – Dublin Route

Considering the incredibly strong ties between Boston and Ireland it’s not exactly hard to figure out why Delta has decided to add this service and it plans to commence flights from 25 May 2017.

Image courtesy of Trenten Kelly via Flickr

Delta will operate a daily service between Boston and Dublin using its Boeing 757 aircraft on the following schedule:

DL154 BOS 21:10 – 08:30+ 1 day DUB
DL155 DUB 10:15 – 12:41 BOS

Delta already serves Dublin out of both JFK and Atlanta but, as already mentioned, it’s no big mystery as to why the airline is starting up this route…albeit just for the summer season.

This route is another example of how Delta is expanding at Boston following the announcement of a number new Boston routes back in August.

Delta Adds New York (JFK) – Lisbon Route

From 25 May 2017 Delta will also begin to serve Lisbon from its base at New York’s JFK and plans on offering a daily service on the following schedule:

DL473 JFK 21:43 – 10:00+ 1 day LIS
DL273 LIS 11:35 – 14:19 JFK

As with the new Dublin flights out of Boston, Delta’s new Lisbon service will be operated by its 757 aircraft and, as things stand, the route is only scheduled to operate for the Summer 2017 season which runs to the end of September.

Delta Brings Back New York (JFK) – Berlin Route

The third and final of today’s route announcements from Delta sees the airline bring back its non-stop service between New York JFK and Berlin’s Tegel airport which it last operated in 2011.

Delta will operate the route using a 767 aircraft on the following schedule:

DL422 JFK 19:49 – 10:30+ 1 day TXL
DL222 TXL 13:30 – 16:19 JFK

Delta’s 757 Aircraft

Delta says that it will operate both the Dublin and Lisbon routes with 757-200 aircraft that seat 164 passengers and the only seatmap SeatGuru shows for a 164-seat Delta 757-200 is this one…..

…which is the aircraft Delta uses (or did use) on its intra-Asia routes. Is this where the aircraft from Delta’s scaled back Tokyo operations are being redeployed?

These aircraft aren’t exactly the most luxurious in Delta’s fleet – no Delta One lie-flat beds here – so it will be interesting to see if Delta modernises these aircraft before the new routes launch.

As things stand the aircraft offers 24 recliner First Class seats, 18 Delta Comfort+ seats and 132 standard economy class seats…and if you’re at all portly you’ll want to stay away from all but the first class seats.

Delta hasn’t loaded the flights into its reservations system yet so ExpertFlyer and Delta.com don’t show the seat maps for the new routes just yet. Once the flights are loaded and I can see what configuration Delta plans for these aircraft I’ll update this post (if it even needs updating).

Delta’s 767 Aircraft

Delta has said that it will operate the JFK – Berlin route with a 767-300 aircraft with 225 seats….but as I can’t find an aircraft on SeatGuru that matches that exact seat count I’m going to have to speculate.

This 767-300 configuration has 226 seats and I’m calling that close enough:

This configuration offers 26 Delta One lie-flat seats, 29 Delta Comfort+ seats and 171 regular economy class seats.

A quick look at the seat dimensions confirms that this will be a considerably more comfortable way to cross the Atlantic than the 757s I was discussing above:

18″ of seat width in Economy Class is almost generous on a modern-day transatlantic flight and the fact that the 767 offers lie-flat seating should be good news for premium cabin travelers.

Bottom Line

Delta has offered some mind-blowing Business Class fares across the Atlantic recently so I was very excited to hear that we would be seeing more transatlantic routes from the airline.

However, my enthusiasm has been tempered (substantially) by the fact that it looks likely that at least two of the routes will not offer lie-flat beds in the front cabin (even American is retrofitting their transatlantic 757 fleet now) so I don’t see them offering much that will be of interest.

On the other hand the New York – Berlin route looks very interesting thanks to the Delta One cabin and, as I’m looking to cheat on American/BA more and more nowadays, this will definitely come into my thinking for next year.