Delta Has An Austin Route Announcement Next Week — Is Paris Finally Happening?

In June I wrote that Delta Air Lines was expected to announce Austin – Paris non-stop for summer 2027. This has been in the works for some time, but aviation watchdog JonNYC said they were finally pulling the trigger. Now Enilria reports that they’ll be making an Austin route announcement on August 13. The August announcement timing makes a summer 2027 Europe route likely. Delta is investing to ‘win’ Austin because it’s a lucrative expansion market for their credit card portfolio, as they detailed in their earnings call last October. A year ago I exclusively revealed that they would build a brand new 30,000 square foot Sky Club at the Austin airport and potentially keep their current Sky Club, too which sits beside the international gates. Then I broke the news in February that they had committed to this plan exactly. Delta has surpassed American to become the second largest airline in Austin behind Southwest. With the new concourse in the 2030s they will grow to 15 gates. The existing club, by the international gates, is meant to be repurposed as a Delta One business class lounge and support international long haul flight growth. Delta Sky Club Austin Delta Sky Club Austin Today, Delta’s joint venture partner KLM flies Austin – Amsterdam three times weekly. That complements competitor flights to Europe on British Airways (London) and Lufthansa (Frankfurt). There’s been talk about Delta long haul growth in Austin since before the pandemic. And while Paris was likely to come first, there was an outside chance it would be Seoul. Delta, Korean Air and Samsung have been in discussions about Austin – Seoul. The airport is offering subsidies for both destinations. Austin was poised for a Paris flight in summer 2020 on Norwegian, cancelled when Covid-19 led to the permanent elimination of all of Norwegian’s long haul flying. At the time it would have made far more sense for a SkyTeam Paris flight to be operated by Air France, because that wouldn’t have involved positioning crew to operate it (given that Air France’s main hub is on one side of the route). But with Delta crew bases in Austin, this becomes more operationally feasible and less costly for them, and they increasingly have a local customer base as well.