Delta Cuts Two Routes To Europe (But Forgets To Mention It)

a plane taking off from a runway

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Delta proudly announced some significant new routes across the Atlantic yesterday including new services from Los Angeles and New York but the airline apparently forgot to mention that, as well as adding transatlantic services, it was also going to cut service to two European cities completely.

USA Today has seen an internal memo sent to Delta employees which confirms that the airline’s seasonal routes to Stockholm and Moscow out of New York JFK will not be returning in 2018.

In the summer of 2017 Delta ran a 4-5x/week service between New York JFK and Moscow on the following schedule….

DL417 JFK 18:40 – 11:35+ 1 day SVO
DL217 SVO 13:30 – 16:45 JFK

….but now that this service is no longer returning in 2018 Delta no longer serves the city of Moscow.

These flight numbers have been passed on to the new JFK – Azores seasonal service due to start 24 May 2018.

Stockholm has now also seen the last of its Delta service (at least for the time being) as the route that was operated 5x/week in 2017….

DL202 JFK 23:30 – 13:40+ 1 day ARN
DL203 ARN 15:10 – 17:50 JFK

…will not be revived in 2018.

Bottom Line

Delta announced some pretty interesting new routes/flights yesterday but it would have been nice if we had been given the news of the route cancellations at the same time.

I don’t see Stockholm as being a major destination for Delta but I am slightly surprised that Delta doesn’t serve Moscow at all any more.

With Delta also set to suspend its Philadelphia – London route as well as it’s seasonal Philadelphia – Paris CDG route the airline is clearly taking a long hard look at the routes on which it wants to compete. With American having such a strong presence in Philadelphia it’s not all that surprising to see services out of there being cut…but New York? That seems odd.

Featured image: Nicky Boogaard via Flickr