Delta Adds Boston To Rome Flight (And More)

I completely agree with Anthony, who I quote, "the city of Atlanta has an incestuous relationship with Delta, which means it has zero interest in attracting new service to ATL, increasing competition, and driving down fares. The city of Atlanta cares more about making Delta executives happy than it does its citizens having affordable flights." I have been saying all these things for a long time... However, I don't think he's correct in assuming that BOS would attract more international traffic than ATL because and I quote, " many Europeans have work/study/tourism reasons to visit Boston, Atlanta is a significantly less desirable destination for Europeans." First of all, I am pretty sure that the majority of international travelers taking DL flights are not European but Americans flying from to Europe and back. And let's face it: ATL has many times more domestic connections than BOS, and if not for stranglehold of ATL airport on DL (79% of all international flights from ATL, according to the latest numbers--clearly a monopoly) with more competition, many more Americans--and Europeans--would fly through ATL. Again, the root of the problem is what was stated above.

@FNT You provided a really important insight, thank you. I completely forgot about corporate travel policies, and those policies can be tough for a business traveler. I can only assume the DL sales and network teams factored this for the BOS services, and they do seem a smart team. Are you restricted to “lowest fare on the day” of purchase, or could you backtrack via the other gateways to qualify for business? I suspect it’s pretty restrictive for you, such is corporate travel policy. Though I’m LA-based now, used to be NYC-based, and I now recall the hassle on my weekly trips to London. I got so tired of it, I just started taking the first flight to London, and then the first flight back to NYC after meetings, which meant less than 24 hours with no London overnights on those trips. Tiring. With my status, at least I normally got the upgrades... All the best...

Many US companies or firms that will pay for business-class to Europe from Detroit, Chicago or Minneapolis because of the distance won’t do so on flights out of Boston because the flight is equivalent to a transcontinental domestic flight. 6 hours or less to London. My firm doesn’t bat an eye at 8 hours in business-class. They would ask questions at paying $3500 for 6 or less hours in business-class, especially when economy is $300-$500 and I could buy an entire row of economy for less than $1500-$1700.

@AJ, the issue is that Delta has a grotesque monopoly at ATL. Moreover, the city of Atlanta has an incestuous relationship with Delta, which means it has zero interest in attracting new service to ATL, increasing competition, and driving down fares. The city of Atlanta cares more about making Delta executives happy than it does its citizens having affordable flights. Another issue is that while many Europeans have work/study/tourism reasons to visit Boston, Atlanta is a significantly less desirable destination for Europeans. So, while many Atlantans would undoubtedly love to visit Rome, many Italians have zero interest in visiting Atlanta.

I love short nonstop flights to Europe that leave the US around 5pm. I don’t sleep on aircraft, so the shorter (and earlier) the flight the better for me.