Delta Air Lines is adding another longhaul flight from its Los Angeles hub with the addition of new service to Auckland, New Zealand.
Delta Air Lines Will Launch New Los Angeles – Auckland Service, Its First New Zealand Route
On October 28, 2023 Delta will launch a daily new nonstop service between Los Angeles (LAX) and Auckland (AKL) using an Airbus A350-900 aircraft. Oddly, Delta will utilize one of its “used” ex-LATAM A350s on the route, featuring:
- 30 Delta One (business class) seats
- 2-2-2 configuration
- 309 economy class seats
- 63 Comfort+ (extra legroom economy)
- 246 standard
Unlike its Delta One Suites featured on its primary sub fleet of A350 jets, the window seats on these jets in business class do not have direct aisle access. No seats have closing doors.
Delta will open its first Delta One Club at LAX in 2024, which will be a dedicated lounge for longhaul Delta One (business class) passengers.
If all previously announced routes do launch, Delta will go from having two longhaul flight from LAX (Sydney and Tokyo Haneda) to six, including:
- Auckland (AKL)
- London (LHR)
- Paris (CDG)
- Sydney (SYD)
- Tahiti (PPT)
- Tokyo (HND)
Justin Erbacci, the Chief Executive Officer of Los Angeles World Airports (which includes LAX), said:
“LAX continues to grow its global network of destinations that are connecting Angelenos to every corner of the globe, and Delta’s addition of nonstop service from Los Angeles to New Zealand is in lockstep with the airline’s commitment to expand and improve service to our region. Coupled with Delta’s international additions to Sydney and Tahiti, this is another exciting result of the ongoing and strong collaboration between LAX and Delta Air Lines as we connect more people across the Pacific and beyond.”
CONCLUSION
While I find Delta’s choice of aircraft on the Auckland route odd, I am excited about the new nonstop service from my home airport. American Airlines tried this route and it did not work and United Airlines has not launched it even though it partners with Air New Zealand. Tickets will go on sale shortly.
see no premium select on this route
Delta should just drop the premium select product entirely, since they do not provide a premium economy service. The only benefit is the seat. It literally is the Big Middle Seat. Just call it widebody comfort plus (extra leg room coach) as that is what it is and leave premium economy to the airlines that know how to provide that level of service
Premium Select is a scam for Diamond Medallion members. Having a Diamond status gives you 4 Global Upgrades which you can use to upgrade to the next level on international flights. You used to buy Economy and upgrade to Delta One. Now, you have to buy this stupid Premium Select for way more than Economy of you want to upgrade to Delta One.
Pure scam!!!
yep. A total scam
When it was first introduced, it was a legit premium product. An upgrade certificate would have been justified to upgrade to that product from economy
Now, you are upgrading from economy to the Big Middle Seat. It is not a true one cabin upgrade any longer
United should be smart and also launch an LAX-AKL flight to push Delta out of the market. If United launches LAX-AKL that would instantly kill the route for Delta. I know most of these LAX routes Delta is launching will fail anyways, but United should be more aggressive in getting them to fail. After all, they have the aircraft to do so.
Agree….. United should start LAX – AKL. I feel it would go well with them, with ANZ, a fellow Star Alliance carrier already on the route.
I’m flying Boston to SFO on United then ANZ to Auckland later this year. Will be interesting to see how Delta’s price compares.
This is great. It’s ridiculous what *A gets away with charging on this route.
However, Delta is missing an opportunity to sell Premium Econ on this long leisure route
DL does not provide a true PE service, however
PE on Delta is simply the Big Middle Seat
As the New Zealand economy slows – already a ridiculously small one at best – one wonders if all of the new and proposed services to Auckland are warranted. Time will tell but it appears to be more vanity flights than viable business decisions.
Now if only I had 400,000 SkyMiles!! I could fly to Auckland and jump over my seatmate when I go to the lav!
Haha so true. Delta is the worst!
That’s coach pricing. Business pricing is 800K one-way.
Somewhere Tony Garea is smiling.
Someone needs to put Delta in their place. They’re trying to be all fancy launching these new routes from LAX, most of which will fail, I can guarantee. What’s next, are they gonna try launching MEL?
Just because UA can make something work doesn’t mean DL or AA can. Delta is missing many things that UA has and they don’t, such as good hubs, but most importantly, UA has the best network team in the industry and DL doesn’t.
All of these expansions Delta is trying to do won’t work. The bulk of their new Boston routes will fail, and so will LA.
LOL – this comment gave me a good laugh, I wouldn’t say I agree about the success/failure of these routes — but I also don’t disagree. I would wait to see what time tells. UA definitely has the best network team, and best hubs, as demonstrated by many massive summer transatlantic expansions, which neither DL or AA have yet to do. But I just had to say this gave me a good laugh to read, in a good way, no bad intentions from me.
Not sure what you are smoking but I can tell you Delta is miles ahead of United in quality. I rarely fly United but when I do I miss Delta so much.
This will be the firsty of many new international routes from Delta. The new contract which its pilots are voting on requires and incentivizes Delta to add more widebody flying on its own metal. The new AKL flight is the first longhaul new city that is being started with the ex-Latam A350s which have the largest number of seats of any DL aircraft. DL is expected to start reconfiguring the A350s with a new and larger business class but lower number of total seats in 2024. The order for A350-1000s is expected to be confirmed later; DL’s president said that they sent it to the board for approval, the 5 350-1000s which Airbus built but did not deliver for Qatar are still grounded, and DL needs the better performance of the -1000 compared to the -900 on its 16+ hour flights. DL’s capex went up by $4 billion after the A350-1000 comment to more than $5 billion per year for 2023-24 so Delta is clearly buying additional aircraft which have not been announced. DL appears to be set to enter an aggressive international expansion phase.
Do you have a source for this info?
Oh crap, you’re here. Which means your “fans” from OMAAT will now also preempt you here.
What’s odd about this? New Zealand is a tourist market and this is a perfect airplane for a tourist market. Pack ’em in.
Sorry – to clarify- you say that you think this is an odd choice, but you dont explain what you mean. What’s odd about it? New Zealand is a tourist market, and Delta will rely on volume to make it work. This is a high volume, pack ’em in plane, which economically is good for a tourist market, assuming there’s demand. Given they have these airplanes in the fleet, where would you put them instead? What’s odd here?
It’s a non-completive seat, even compared to the herringbone seats offered by Air New Zealand from LAX or the Polaris seats United offers from SFO.
Again, it doesnt matter. It’s a tourist route, and there are plenty of Delta frequent flyers who will just hit “purchase” since it’s on Delta and that all that matters to them. The seat really doesnt matter here. Or elsewhere in the US – do you think your Delta Platinum medallion member in Atlanta or Minneapolis or Detroit is going to even be aware of Air New Zealand’s “better” seat when purchasing their once in a lifetime trip to New Zealand for their vacation? Absolutely not. They’ll just see that Delta is on the route and they can either use their points (extortionate) or just suck it up and pay. They wont know anything about Air New Zealand and it wont be nearly as convenient for them to consider. Adn for the coach passenger? They’ll be motivated by price. Pure and simple. I contend it doesnt matter.
But you do contend that the seat is important. With that in mind, where should Delta put this airplane? Where should they be flying it if, as you contend, they wont be competitive in New Zealand? Certainly not a corporate market like London, where people do know about the seat. Or Paris. Or Amsterdam. Where should it go? They have to put it somewhere. I contend that a tourist heavy route like New Zealand is perfect for this. Convince me otherwise.
I think they should use it for Latin America. In a sense, it would even match what customers can expect when flying LATAM.
@Matthew: Delta sucks in Latin America. Market totally dominated by AA for US airlines. Delta should definitely make Latin America a priority.
@Jason: I couldn’t agree more. Back in the old days on NWA, I used to fly to Asia once a month. Based at MSP I thought I was smart to fly NWA to LAX and then get much better airlines to Asia. I flew so many times on business class at Cathay and Singapore. I didn’t have kids at that time. However, after you get older and have a family, you couldn’t care less about better seats, better food, better wine. You care about convenience. As long as I fly business class, Delta will win all the time. I live on a Delta hub and that means no matter what I will save time by flying them. Time with my family is worth way more than being at a nicer lounge, nicer seat or having a nicer food. Add to that I get status which helps a lot when traveling on vacation with family.
LATAM’s seats on their 777s and 767s are not like this anymore – they’re more pod like. I dont think it’ll be a problem and I dont think people will book away from this because of the seat. more than anything else, I wonder about whether the market is getting saturated. There’s a lot of seats to New Zealand and at the end of the day it’s not a huge market. TBD. The seat wont make or break DL’s success or failure in the market. What will is their distribution strength, their ability (everybody’s ability, that is) to stimulate the market, and the extent to which they their frequent flyers will actually go to NZ. It’ll be interesting.
I agree with previous comments that AKL is a very small market which already has incredible levels of connectivity. It’s hard to see how all these airlines can fill planes profitably all year round when it’s a city of less than half a million residents in a country that’s not exactly massive and it’s extremely far from everywhere else.
That was supposed to read ‘less than one and a half million’!
It will be interesting to see what price Delta charges for business. Air NZ is usually more expensive than United from SFO, which matches their better service and food, although Air NZ’s seats are complicated to make lie flat and I usually let the flight attendants do it. United has by far the better schedules and connections than Air NZ regardless of whether you land in SFO or LAX with Air NZ.