Delta Launching Seattle To London Flights In 2021

The headline should be relaunching since Delta has previously flown Seattle-London.

I don’t know why anyone would fly Delta business-class to London when they could fly Virgin Atlantic. Virgin’s experience is — or was pre-covid — so much better, though the actual seat wasn’t as nice.

Apart from war on the marker, I like the timing. Dinner on a plane and going to sleep on SEA-LHR flight is great operational time. Also back from London, no need to hurry in the morning to LHR. Plenty of choices to connect to this flight from Europe on KL/AF too. And the seat looks promising too. DL would be my choice number one and I've wanted to visit the Boeing factory for long time.

Since I used to fly this route 5-10 times a year I can state that there probably is demand - particularly servicing Amazon, Microsoft etc. I used to find it hard to get a seat at a good price - most of the time it was way more expensive than London to New York despite only being a bit longer, and particularly in business class was often more expensive than me flying back to New Zealand from London!

I flew the SEA-LHR Delta flights a few times years ago, and personally, I prefer Delta over Virgin. I'm usually flying alone or with 1 person, and I hate VA's 3-3-3 configuration in Economy for that reason. I'll take Delta's 2-3-2 instead! Virgin's atmosphere is much cooler though.

This is a great flight! I think that the 767 and a330 are better than the 787 because I love the 2-3-2 layout in economy.

Having only 2 seats on the ends means only 1 middle seat per row, amazing!!

We love taking Delta and actually prefer it to its partners, so we always choose Delta when possible.

Looking back at my old itineraries, the SEA-LHR flight is timed similar to what it was in 2016 (+/- 20 minutes). In a pre Covid world, one (small) downside of the timing I remember is that arriving at 12:30ish means by the time you go through immigration and get your bag, there is little to no time to use the Virgin Revivals lounge (which used to close at 1:30pm). I guess if you are going into London, your hotel room may be ready by the time you get into the city.

Virgin's lounges are currently closed (as is terminal 3), and I haven't seen a reopening date, so for now this is not an issue.

Maybe American will now retaliate and go after Delta's SEA-CDG. Assuming I ever travel again, more options are better. Springtime in Paris is looking unlikely for 2021. Maybe AA could start by 2022? I'll have a lot of miles from Bask Bank by then.

They used to fly the same 767 on that route a few years back, and it probably is still falling apart. When my colleague and I would take that flight, it was guaranteed that one of us would have something broken with one of our seats. Whoever had the working display or power would have to buy the other a beer once we made it to a pub after checking in to our hotel in London.

There are a few people citing Amazon as driving demand for SEA-LHR.

Although Amazon does send some staff to London from Seattle, all of those staff fly economy, are required to select the cheapest available fare including a checked bag and are required to book weeks in advance to obtain the lowest price. SEA-LHR really isn't a lucrative route for airlines servicing Amazon.

Brilliant. There is no way that AA backing off because of DL new launch. You will definitely see AA will attack DL badly by launching some other routes . I love it as I travel always LHR on AA . And it's worth it as most of the time I get my EVIP upgrade . Love AA service and their Premium agents .

@M.O.

They actually used to fly a 767-300ER a few years back. This will be a recently renovated 767-400.

another re-launch of a previously-run route to a JV hub.

#boring

@UA - no longer true. There are plenty of senior folks at Amazon who get biz class for int'l travel. Not just c-suite folks, often down to the Director level.

I will say that are right that you generally don't go after an Amazon contract for the margins, but rather for the volume. They have been filling a crazy number of seats out of seatac, even in the midst of a pandemic.

Might help explain why we suddenly have way too many seats opening up.

What's missing in the equation is that both are serving hubs in Seattle. American is joint venturing with Alaska, which makes their trans-Atlantic service from SeaTac viable. The LHR route signals Delta is dead serious about Seattle.

Wow, a hub war! We haven't had that in awhile!