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Delta Air Lines plans to start flying from Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Pittsburgh to Paris-Charles de Gaulle International Airport next June.
Atlanta-based Delta said it is offering the two new routes through its joint venture with Air France, which will connect passengers to other cities in Europe via its Paris hub.
Raleigh-Durham and Pittsburgh are not Delta hubs, which makes the new routes unusual. Big airlines almost always fly overseas from hubs, where they can concentrate passenger loads.
In addition, the new Raleigh-Durham and Pittsburgh routes will be on 174-seat, narrowbody Boeing 757-200 aircraft, which are smaller than the widebody 767, its trans-Atlantic workhorse. Delta will fly each route five days a week.
Delta announced its joint venture with Air France last year and launched it earlier this year when an Open Skies agreement liberalized flights between the European Union and the United States.
The joint venture makes the routes possible “in that it allows us additional reach into secondary U.S. markets with high trans-Atlantic demand,” said Delta spokesman Kent Landers. “They’re relatively large markets with large Delta customer bases.”
Delta said the routes make sense because Air France can connect passengers to other destinations in Europe and can draw customers from its network in Europe, and the 757 is small enough for markets like Raleigh-Durham and Pittsburgh.
“This allows us to provide service to Paris from markets that are not Delta’s hubs,” Landers said.
source: www.ajc.com
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