Delta Air Lines has just announced plans to launch a new seasonal flight between the United States and United Kingdom, which will also be the carrier’s first route between Florida and London.
In this post:
Delta adds Orlando to London winter route
For the upcoming winter season, Delta intends to operate a 4x weekly nonstop flight between Orlando (MCO) and London (LHR). The route will operate between October 26, 2024, and March 29, 2025, with the following schedule:
Orlando to London departing 10:35PM arriving 11:40AM (+1 day)
London to Orlando departing 4:00PM arriving 8:20PM
The 4,336-mile flight is blocked at 8hr5min eastbound and 9hr20min westbound. The service will be operated by an Airbus A330-900neo, featuring 281 seats, including 29 business class (Delta One) seats, 28 premium economy (Premium Select) seats, 56 extra legroom economy (Comfort+) seats, and 168 economy (Main Cabin) seats.
Orlando will be the eighth destination in the United States that Delta serves nonstop from London. Delta has a transatlantic joint venture with Air France-KLM and Virgin Atlantic, and this is a route that Virgin Atlantic already serves twice daily in winter. I’m curious if this new Delta flight is in lieu of one of Virgin Atlantic’s existing services, or in addition to it.
This seems like a logical seasonal service
As you’d expect, long haul demand is generally quite seasonal. The global US carriers profit greatly off summer seasonal demand across the Atlantic (between the United States and Europe). The challenge is figuring out where to profitably fly those wide body planes in winter.
Of course there are some destinations that are more popular in the northern winter (like the South Pacific and South America), but the demand isn’t as great as it is for routes to Europe.
It’s pretty rare to see US airlines operating winter-only routes to Europe, but in this case it makes sense. Clearly Delta is trying to tap into demand in Europe to visit warmer climates like Florida in winter, rather than this being targeted at those in the United States.
This is actually the third seasonal route that Delta is launching this winter between Florida and Europe, with the others being a resumption of the Tampa to Amsterdam route, plus an Orlando to Amsterdam route, both feeding into KLM’s network.
The only thing I find surprising here is how late this route is being announced. We’re only four months from it launching, so you would’ve assumed that the airline would have planned this route a bit earlier. I wonder if another long haul route is being pulled for winter, if the airline is just taking some wide bodies off domestic flights, or how this fits into Delta’s overall route planning.
Bottom line
Delta will be launching a new winter seasonal route between Orlando and London. The service will operate 4x weekly between late October 2024 and late March 2025. This seems like a good use of a wide body jet in winter, given the demand to travel from the UK to Florida in winter.
This will be Delta’s third winter seasonal flight between Florida and Europe, with the others being from Orlando and Tampa to Amsterdam.
What do you make of Delta adding an Orlando to London route?
So I guess there’s lots of people wanting to fly London to Disney world
This is another example of Delta being the most premium carrier that only flies premium routes. Orlando (along with Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and Detroit) are the four most important cities in the United States and produce most of the demand to London. While AA wastes frames flying 4x daily from LAX, and United squanders their resources with their backwater hub at Dulles, Delta wins again!
As a very regular ’pond hopper’ originating from and returning to LHR, I can think of nothing worse than a Delta flight to/from any US hub.
The airline has never appealed to me for a multitude of reasons, least of all the airline reviews published on sites such as this.
Sorry Delta fans.
Thanks for the article Ben!
This isn’t the first Florida to London route that DL has operated though, they used to fly MIA-LHR.
DL previously offered MCO-MIA-LGW with no “local” MCO-MIA passengers. On an L1011 so you may not have taken your first flight then Ben.
It's a shame it's not Belfast International Airport to Orlando
Virgin used to operate that route. Unfortunately I haven't seen it come back since the pandemic. Same with Glasgow. They recently resumed service to Edinburgh though to Orlando!
Perhaps if they order more aircraft, they will resume that route. The route likely hasn't resumed due to lack of extra aircraft, since VS's fleet has shrunk compared to 2019.
Virgin seems to be cutting Manchester as they've abandoned their plans for a lounge. While Sir Richard talks a great game publicly about the airline, Delta seems to be running it and the CEO has had to publicly walk back what the nominal majority shareholder says.
I believe this flight will be in addition to Virgin Atlantic's existing services. Pre-Covid, Virgin operated an additional A330-300 flight between MCO and London during peak season, in addition to their year round 2x daily 747-400 flights. Now, Virgin only flies between MCO and London 2x daily on A350-1000s. Additionally, Thomas Cook used to have another daily MCO-LGW flight pre-covid (before they went belly up), and Norwegian also flew the route. There is definetly demand...
I believe this flight will be in addition to Virgin Atlantic's existing services. Pre-Covid, Virgin operated an additional A330-300 flight between MCO and London during peak season, in addition to their year round 2x daily 747-400 flights. Now, Virgin only flies between MCO and London 2x daily on A350-1000s. Additionally, Thomas Cook used to have another daily MCO-LGW flight pre-covid (before they went belly up), and Norwegian also flew the route. There is definetly demand for DL to operate the route. A huge amount of Brits come to Florida.
I wonder if we might see DL also launch a winter seasonal MCO-CDG route in the future. That route currently isn't served by any airline, and DL would have connectivity beyond CDG on Air France. With DL's spare widebodies in the winter, I would love to see this happen!
Also, DL's long haul expansion out of MCO also likely has something to do with the upgrade in capacity with the new Terminal C. Most international airlines have moved to Terminal C, which frees up space in the terminal where Delta and VS operate out of (that Terminal was predominantly Delta and long-haul international carriers).
Don't forget that Delta has a crew base in Orlando, too. Additionally, Orlando may not be a "hub" but there are certainly enough flights there for onward connections, including on LATAM and Aeromexico. You can even fly intra-Florida on Delta from Orlando to Miami.
Not too sure it will be additional as I don’t believe Delta has any free slots unless VS are going to do a slot trade or I’ve missed a DL route change in the W24 schedule. Saying that there’s been a lot of slot trade action over the last few months;
https://www.acl-uk.org/completed-slot-trades/
What I find most shocking is that DL is using their most premium Business suite on a route that is pure leisure/holiday. Major business markets like JFK/BOS-LHR on DL don’t even get aircraft with the D1 Suite.
Why on earth would DL waste such a premium aircraft on a low-yielding route?
I wonder if it has to do with aircraft availability. Looking at the new flight's timings, it seems that they're setting it up so the plane would fly XXX-LHR-MCO-LHR-YYY with the itinerary starting and ending at proper Delta hubs in the U.S. (or maybe the same hub). The A333, A339, and A359 all have similar total capacity (and quite a bit more than the 767) so it might have come down to which type was the best fit for the schedule.
BINGO
Delta did this with the mco-ams flight. Plane would fly ATL/ JFK- AMS- MCO- AMS- JFK/ATL. Orlando was used as an outstation more or less.
@Dt123 Did you not read my original post you jumped in on? DL doesn’t fly the A330-900 on JFK-LHR-JFK so tell us how’d that’d work?
Let me help you - they don’t fly ATL-LHR-ATL with it either.
They may have published the schedule for this flight but it is certain that there are still aircraft changes on other routes.
as for the comment about aircraft type (339), DL's 339s have more total seats than VS' 339s and fewer premium seats. VS' 339s have more premium economy seats than the new DL 359s but fewer business seats
Nope I didn't. I was specifically replying to Miguel and providing context for his theory.
The mco to ams flight was an A330- i think they have those in jfk, no?
Same with the a339 (I just looked- they are flying jfk-lhr with the a339 right at this very moment- DL3, might want to check)
The MCO to AMS would flight would frequently be JFK- AMS- MCO- AMS- JFK.
Furthermore, as...
Nope I didn't. I was specifically replying to Miguel and providing context for his theory.
The mco to ams flight was an A330- i think they have those in jfk, no?
Same with the a339 (I just looked- they are flying jfk-lhr with the a339 right at this very moment- DL3, might want to check)
The MCO to AMS would flight would frequently be JFK- AMS- MCO- AMS- JFK.
Furthermore, as Miguel stated, A333, A359, and A339 all have similar capacity. Do you think it's possible for a flight that is currently marketed as an A333 to get switched to an A339?
Orlando is popular with Brits who don't want to go to continental Europe. Tampa is another popular destination with Brits. It will be curious to see what this is like for Delta global upgrade clearance rates, as the flight times are very attractive for anyone who wants to sleep going over and miss the morning rush at Heathrow. Coming back, the late departure gives you a decent time on the ground and also misses the...
Orlando is popular with Brits who don't want to go to continental Europe. Tampa is another popular destination with Brits. It will be curious to see what this is like for Delta global upgrade clearance rates, as the flight times are very attractive for anyone who wants to sleep going over and miss the morning rush at Heathrow. Coming back, the late departure gives you a decent time on the ground and also misses the rush of early afternoon and late morning departures to the USA. With that said, I think I would take Virgin Atlantic over Delta if I was paying cash for business-class as the food and booze is better.
@lucky Delta also flies to Amsterdam from Orlando in the winter so this will be the third FL-Europe flight.
@ Trey -- Good catch, thanks! Updating post now.
Delta flew LGW-MIA after the Pan Am route acquisition.
They also briefly flew LHR-MIA shortly after the AA/BA JV was originally approved. They got the slots as part of the concessions required for the approval.
Apparently they're reducing Seattle-lhr from daily to 3 days a week during this period and finding the LHR slot that way for this new flight
I would say this is among the least risk Non-Hub to Hub Routes any airline can launch.
Delta has all the feed data from Virigin & all the passengers already doing this route From Manchester & London through Atlatna and JFK