Major US carrier, Delta Air Lines has announced its plans to add a non-stop service to Kona on the ‘Big Island’ of Hawaii, as well as increasing services from its hub at Seattle-Tacoma.
The new Hawaii route will operate once daily from December 19, 2015, and will put the airline in direct competition with partner, Alaska Airlines. Delta will fly the route using a Boeing 757-200 aircraft.
The airline will also increase services from Seattle with an additional daily flight to Palm Springs, California – for a total of two daily seasonal flights from December 19, 2015. Delta will also add a daily seasonal flight to Tucson, which will also commence on December 19.
Also directly in competition with Alaska Airlines will be Delta’s extended seasonal service to a daily year-round to Fairbanks and Juneau in Alaska, beginning May 15, 2015. The airline will also expand seasonal service to Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta in Mexico from October 3, 2015.
Fairbanks, Juneau and Puerto Vallarta will use Boeing 737-800 aircraft, while Los Cabos will use Airbus A319 aircraft. Palm Springs and Tucson service will be operated by Delta Connection carrier SkyWest using two-class, 65-seat CRJ-700 aircraft. Additionally, Delta will introduce Boeing 717 aircraft on some existing routes between Seattle and Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Phoenix.
"Over the past year, we've focused on building our Seattle hub by adding new service and investing in our products and facilities to provide a strong, differentiated option to key destinations for both our business and leisure customers," Mike Medeiros, Delta's VP of Seattle.
Delta said it will now serve Seattle’s top 15 destinations in the Western US, with recently announced services to Boise, Idaho, Denver and Sacramento which launch this spring. During the summer season, Delta offers 10 long-haul international flights from Seattle including the top five destinations in Asia and top three destinations in Europe including Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Paris, Shanghai and Tokyo-Haneda.
Alaska Airlines is based is based in Seattle and for a long time was the airport’s top carrier. In 2012, Delta began expanding its Seattle operation and now has 85 peak-day departures to 31 destinations with plans to raise this to 126 flights to 35 destinations by summer.
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