A couple of weeks ago, Delta Air Lines announced its transatlantic expansion for 2025, which included seven new routes to Europe. A couple of days ago, the airline revealed one additional route, which seems like an obvious enough addition. I wanted to provide an update, as this route is now on sale, so we know…
Continue reading: Delta Adds Minneapolis To Copenhagen Flights, Linking Up With SAS
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Oh look at that, Delta adding service to another partner hub, the only thing it still knows how to do (in terms of longhaul service).
Understandable. Completely logical. Pretty sad though, compared to United. Going to be funny when "but but but, Delta makes more money!" is no longer the excuse. Looks like we'll be seeing that, shortly.
Why bother if you’re not going to do it daily? And Minneapolis, really? It’s like somebody in Delta route planning said well, “Minnesota has a bunch of third or fourth generation Scandinavian Americans. Might as well give them a flight.”
And the product is horrible.
More and more long haul routes at MSP.
Number of showers in the whole airport: 0.
Why bother if you’re not going to do it daily?
Because online-AvGeeks stress far more over "daily," than do actual airlines or corporate clients, nowadays.
Gone are the days when carriers flew half-empty planes on low-demand days, just to sustain daily service, as an attempt at competitive corporate offerings.
Percentage of people for whom that's a determinant in their travel selection: 0.0000000001.
Looking into the future VS are looking at “dynamic equipment changes” based on demand, PAX and cargo numbers will determine which aircraft they will deploy on the route. They are working with Fetcherr the AI company VS use for its dynamic pricing systems, interesting interview with VS VP Revenue on how it’s going and what’s coming in the future.
MSP is a connecting hub for most passengers, and a shower after a long flight really freshens you up.
I'm always soaked up in sweat after a long flight(especially Asian carriers), and the first thing I do in the lounge before my connecting flight is taking a shower.
A fair pint that people aren’t choosing things based off that, but it is notable they are selling Delta One seats without an actual Delta One club despite the size and scale of the MSP hub.
Or you know it is their second biggest hub, and home to numerous corporate clients such as Target, Ameriprise, 3M, and Medtronic?
To add more color to this statement 15 current Fortune 500 companies HQ in the Twin Cities. Covers retail, med-tech, manufacturing, healthcare, etc. the amount of international corporate travel out of this market continues to grow.
Comments about the “why MSP” typically come from coastal folks as this market is simply flyover country…
profitability matters more than points on a map from an investment POV. However, if and when United surpasses Delta in profitability, then of course the conversation about Delta being too conservative is fair game.
feel free to calculate the percentage of service to JV partner hubs.
psst. You clearly have no clue how many widebody flights UA flies to BRU, FRA, MUC, and ZRH and it is a far larger percentage of UA's WIDEBODY network than DL.
You add ITA to the mix and the numbers will be skewed in DL's favor as having a more non-JV focused network.
UA's TATL network is large because of narrowbodies, not because UA flies a bunch of widebodies to destinations that
AA's TATL network is far more skewed than either DL or UA to its JV partners for 6 or more months of the year.
IOW... another fact check proves you are wrong.
It is highly unlikely that DL's service to CPH will be all seasonal. It is hard to know how much service a CPH JV hub will support but DL doesn't current serve CPH year round right now.
The chances that a 3X/week flight from MSP join JFK as year round are actually fairly high as long as SK serves ATL year round
you're so weird about excluding part of United's network because you don't approve of their plane choice. lol
"AA's TATL network is far more skewed than either DL or UA to its JV partners for 6 or more months of the year."
And yeah... it's because customers want to travel to London year-round.
Grow up...
I wonder if SAS will end up switching their NYC flights back to JFK and completely drop out of EWR given their new partnership
This is a great route for me, and I plan to use it a lot for as long as it lasts. This route may even be the one to get me over the next million mile threshold with Delta.
The showers matter to me too. It’s unfortunate Delta doesn’t have any there. Does the IC hotel at MSP offer gym/spa or dayroom access with showers?
I wouldn’t be surprised if MSP may end up being a test airport for one-stop security when coming from/via CPH and the need to claim bags at MSP when connecting at MSP on arrival from CPH may go away under a test program. It would be great to avoid TSA screening at MSP when flying back into the US and taking an onward flight upon arrival back in the US.
They certainly would like to do that, but doing that depends upon space/slots coming available at JFK.
There are more German-Americans in the area than Scandinavian-Americans, but Delta hasn’t been game for a MSP-Germany flight. Well, now that Condor and Luftwaffe serve MSP-Germany, maybe Delta will try to chase one or both of them out of MSP.
nobody is excluding any of it.
Smaller planes mean smaller numbers of ASMs.
Now, impotent max, since you want to argue, calculate the number of ASMs that AA, DL and UA operate to each of their joint venture hubs.
The answer is that DL operates a HIGHER percentage of its TATL and TPAC ASMs to non-JV partner hubs than AA or UA.
And SAS is not even a JV partner for DL right now. Just wait til ITA becomes one for UA and the numbers will be absolutely tanked in UA's favor.
Again, hypocrite, logs and specks.
Has anyone noticed this "Roberto" is always commenting right next to Tim Dunn and seemingly always says something in favour of Tampon Tim?
I think this may be a cautious first step by Delta, testing the waters. Choosing Minneapolis - Sankt Pål is the safest bet when compared to Detroit (still has a rough reputation in Europe and a large Arab population, not a large population with Scandi roots) or Salt Lake City (no affinity with Scandinavia except perhaps for winter sports), which are other hubs. I expect more and increased activity once SK enters the TATL JV (because that will happen at some point). It's all very safe, conservative and careful here.
I somehow feel that United has now been proactive in taking the hunting grounds for Americans with Greenlandic viking heritage by storm. That should have been Delta, of course, to show full commitment to its new partner.
Have I got news for you! SAS already started flying to JFK from CPH and from 30 March 2025 they'll add a seasonal service from OSL, too!
If an airline had a too big surplus on its balance sheet then I won't fly it. It would mean that I'm being overcharged for my ticket.
Fun fact. 'Delta' means 'to participate' in some Scandinavian languages. Let them finally live up to that.
eskimo
DL operates a properly banked hub at MSP.
The destinations that it will sell the most of aren't timed for a shower.
btw, did you miss that the part of the interview that was cut said that DL was working on a Delta One lounge for MSP?
what WILL you b89uch about next?
I'm not the same one as above. I used to comment under the username "Roberto" constantly mocking Timothy Edward Bastian Dunn, but it was clear that you can't change a narcist that has an unhealthy obsession with the 5 letter D word. It's actually gotten kind of exhausting knowing that you can expect to see him fight it out and flex what he thinks is his intellectual superiority with every person that goes against his delusionism in the comments section.
Agree with the below comment that this (just like the new ATL-CPH route by SK) is not an O/D market of any significance. The widebody equipment would be better off on something like SFO-ICN, quite frankly. Or better yet, on domestic trans-cons.
And not sure what the point is of flying less-than-daily.
There were literally no Delta One lounges anywhere until recently and Delta was perfectly able to sell Delta One seats for years.
The ground experience ranks much lower for consumers compared to the actual service in the air.
People need to quit crying about interior hubs being given second class treatment. You have no other choice and Delta knows it.
My family’s Delta One flyers out of MSP favor KLM wide-bodies’ business class over Delta’s business class out of MSP. We would prefer that there be showers in at least one of the lounges at MSP, but connecting at DTW, JFK or ORD isn’t any better (even as the former two have showers in the lounges when flying SkyTeam internationally).
@GUWonder: Scandinavia = Denmark + Sweden + that former colony of both of them (Norway).
If you add Finland and Iceland, you'll end up with the Nordics.
If you add the Baltic states to the Nordics, you'd end up with the Nordic-Baltic Eight.
@Tim Dunn: that was probably the most useless and nonsensical comment I've seen from you so far. Competitors to the Scandinavian languages use widebodies?
The more you fly it, the bigger the change that it lasts. So go for it and crush that milestone! 🙂
Iceland is Scandinavian as far as I am concerned. Icelandic and Faroese are Scandinavian languages and the culture basically is too. Geographically, Iceland annd the Faroe Islands aren’t mainland Scandinavian, but linguistically they are Scandinavian. Finland’s Finnish is of course not Scandinavian, as the language group has it bundled with Hungarian and Estonian. And it was Finland more than Norway that was a quasi-colony of Sweden, even as Sweden’s dominion with Norway was more recent than it’s dominion with Finland.
I tend to be a value-hunter flyer, so the route won’t float because of someone like me.
Too bad for me that this route isn’t slated to last longer than seasonally, but I do hope it works out for Delta/SAS as presumptive code-share partners on the route since I was hoping to have this become one of my primary TATL trunk routes and use it year-round. Summer time, I would rather spend more weeks in Scandinavia than in the US. [MSP has become blistering hot in the summer time — it was worse than Chicago and DC on too many days this past summer.]. Of course for a Florida guy/gal, it’s not in the same league but that I am not.
you do realize that, of all the routes that AA, DL, and UA added this year, MOST were added on a less-than-daily schedule. That much less than daily service ACROSS THE INDUSTRY indicates that the amount of demand to stimulated is fairly small and airlines aren't willing to continue to add a bunch of capacity that will underperform.
And, MSP-CPH will be operated by a 280 seat widebody, in contrast to UA's new routes that are heavily narrowbody, less than daily which shows how little extra demand they expect to stimulate.
And whether MSP-CPH becomes daily year round or not or it becomes JFK, DL will have daily year round service to CPH from one of its hubs. and it could be a combination of 2 hubs.
My take on airports in the US and Canada is that they're mostly there to process passengers like cattle and make them stay there as little time as possible, not to give a convenient travel experience. The absence of showers just adds to that authentic experience. Besides, if those showers are like their airport lounges, then chances are that there'll be long lines and that it'll turn into a worn and mediocre experience in no time, where you'll have to pay extra for basic necessities like the use of some soap or a towel. Oh, and there'll be a loud mouthed idiot standing next to the line screaming 'move along people, keep moving' 24/7, even though people are already standing there packed onto each other and waiting for their turn.
😉
Years ago I got a number that something like a quarter of the people who transit MSP airside have at least sometimes originated/terminated trips at MSP. Not sure how accurate that was, but the airport has always seemed to me to be something on the order of 3/4 transit passengers on my flights unless it’s the early morning flights out of MSP.
People who say this sort of stuff have not even done the barest of research. You do realize MN effectivet has state to state relationships with Sweden and Norway right? That their head of governments and Royal family frequently visit, have established quasi embassies (Norway House in Minneapolis funded directly by the Norwegian government as well as the only Church of Norway church still in the USA?). The ties between Scandinavia and MN are not just some vague connection but enduring governmental business and cultural ties.
and yet even formal relationships don't sell airline seats - it is the level of demand not just for the local market but also the hub.
There are a lot of people in MN that are of Scandinavian origin but MSP is a large hub - the 2nd largest DL hub in domestic seats IIRC.
The combination of the two PLUS the ability to connect at CPH even on a codeshare basis now and w/ a JV at some point in the future is what makes the flight viable even on a 3X week basis for starters.
it is certain that DL will announce new service to Scandinavia esp. as the JV is approved but this is DL's first step with the SAS relationship and it will only grow from here.
MSP just happens to be a great building block on which the rest of the SAS relationship will grow.
And other Scandinavian routes will likely come whether on SAS or DL
I am befuddled Tim. I am not disagreeing with you, and yet you still feel the need to explain exactly why it is that I’m wrong. I am a MN resident and MSP flier so my interest and my defense in these matters is always that people underestimate the Twin Cities and MN as a whole, including Delta itself in its decisions.
Why is it boring? Before the last 20 months, MSP had barely any non-stop flights to/from Europe beside what Delta/AF/KL, Icelandair and Condor offered. So it was basically AMS, CDG, KEF, sometimes LHR and Condor’s Germany destination. In June 2025, MSP will have the most destinations in Europe it has ever had.
Tim is probably high on cookie dough.
ConcordeBoy probably stinks or never flown long haul.
But I can assure you one thing, MSP is not a properly banked hub.
Having a 32 min just to misconnect to over 4 hours transit is not properly banked.
And because DL kept MSP the way NW left it for almost two decade is probably why it's cheaper to connect through MSP than DTW JFK SEA or ATL.
And no I didn't get the part that the D1 lounge will have showers.
Fluff you and your cookie dough.
To me this is odd because I don’t think there is that high amount of demand to Copenhagen. Especially out of places like Atlanta it seems odd
Add in all the flights going into Atlanta from across the Americas plus all the short-haul flights that are from Copenhagen
Well, it's clearly related to SAS joining SkyTeam so it's not about the demand to CPH itself but Scandinavia (+ other SK catchment areas) in general.
just because my reply comes under yours does not mean I am entirely addressing my comment to you.
I don't underestimate MN or MSP since I noted it has DL's 2nd largest hub as measured by domestic seats - which means a large and healthy local market but also the ability to feed international flights. The two cannot be separated.
I hope DL finds lots of other cultural/historic connections between its hub cities and other parts of the world but I also don't understate the power of scores of domestic flights all connecting with a single international flight to meet demand from not just across the midwest and western US but also beyond CPH.
The Norwegian and Swedish heads of state (i.e, Norway’s King and Sweden’s king) and heads of government (ie, their Prime Ministers) very rarely visit Minnesota any more. Norway was the last true Scandinavian consulate in Minnesota, and Norway closed that shop over a decade ago because the ties between Norway and Minnesota (and the neighboring states) had thinned out to such degree that there was no longer any need for a regular consulate there for Norway.
We all realize that Ben loves to play the a.net troll to generate page clicks and pander to the obnoxious UA fan club but
Delta is committing widebody aircraft - which it is receiving from Airbus as scheduled - for expansion of its global network across the Atlantic and Pacific while American has added a couple new widebody TATL routes which will probably become A321XLR routes at least in the winter.
United, in contrast, has announced no, new widebody year round flights.
- Is UA so uncertain of when they will receive new aircraft from Boeing that they don't want to commit to new routes?
- Is the market so tapped out that UA can't even figure out how to deploy a new widebody on a daily long haul route?
- Is the cost of settling w/ its flight attendants and then to start negotiations with its mechanics going to reduce its profitability so much that they don't want to risk new routes?
regardless of the answer, CPH-MSP is yet one more widebody route that DL is adding far surpassing the international network growth of its most direct competitors.
It's basically about joining 2 larger SkyTeam hubs, especially now that SK will make CPH their main hub. I'm pretty confident that the majority of every flight will be filled with passengers who are connecting on at least one end, possibly both ends.
Wow Timmy, you really have outdunn yourself this time.
I've never seen someone being so butthurt due to an airline adding some adventurous new routes to its network. Really, I've seen toddlers acting more mature if things didn't go their way. And the only thing you found to 'defend' how 'premium' Delta is, is the use of wide bodies? You even have to somehow involve the current shitshow at Boeing to show how superior Delta is? That's more far-fetched than the range of an A350-900ULR can cover. I'd almost think you're desperate.
Timmy, we don't live in the 1970s anymore. Jumbo jets are out. We now live in an era of boutique airlines and personal attention. Smaller is better, when it comes to aircraft. We now also live in an era where new technology gives new opportunities and United has been grabbing these opportunities with both hands, where DL completely missed the boat. I think that's also what most other readers here appreciate so much about the announced new routes: it shows entrepreneurial spirit, strategy, vision and a willingness to actually try new things, given the possibilities. Are you really saying that United should have bought and utilized a 747 or so to Greenland to show you some dominance on international routes? And how do you assert dominance and superiority when your beloved DL can't even fly daily to Scandinavia's biggest SkyTeam hub, CPH, from one of its own hubs on a widebody? As a business traveler, it would be much more convenient for me if there were daily flights and I'd happily spend that time on a smaller aircraft that cuts out traveling distance and gets the job done, and that gets me back home one or two days earlier than some 3-times-a-week old and worn widebody.
Thanks for calling us a 'UA fan club' and Ben a 'troll'. Every insult from you is actually a compliment. Every circus needs a clown and I guess we have you. Please don't visit a psychologist to get treatment for your Delta obsession, we'd miss this kind of contributions. Again, thanks for the laughs, you reaction was hysterical!
ah, come on. The internet is for fun FOR US ALL.
If you are laughing, I am laughing twice as hard.
UA fan kiddos have told us for years about how great their international route system is but they haven't announced a single widebody daily route.
DL is onto multiple new widebody routes , some daily, and some less than daily which combined w/ other routes makes for MULTIPLE WIDEBODY additions.
If Mongolia was such a great route, don't you think UA would fly it daily w/ a narrowbody and year round. I mean, really. we have more seats to some really remote parts of N. America than UA will be offering to some of these destinations.
Few flights on small planes - means revenue will grow very little.
Widebodies means more ASMs, more revenue - and UA's lead shrinks.
UA's aged fleet needs to be retired, UA is not getting widebodies, markets aren't there to keep adding new widebody flights for UA.
We understand exactly what is happening.
and it is all very funny.
btw, how many MAXs do you think UA can convince Boeing to deliver in the 4th quarter?