Delta Air Lines will launch seasonal service from Los Angeles to Brisbane in a bid to push United Airlines out of the market and take advantage of generous subsidies from the Queensland, Australia government.
Delta Air Lines Announces Los Angeles – Brisbane Service, Latest Carrier To Take Advantage of Queensland Subsidies
For a four-month period between December 4, 2024, and March 28, 2025, Delta will launch 3x weekly service between LAX and BNE:
- DL93 / Los Angeles (LAX) to Brisbane (BNE) / dep 11:10 PM / arr 7:45 AM+2 days
- DL92 / Brisbane (BNE) to Los Angeles (LAX) / dep 10:45 AM / arr 6:15 AM
Delta will utilize an Airbus A350-900 for the route, featuring 306 seats configured:
- 32 “Delta One” business class seats
- 48 “Premium Select” premium economy class seats
- 36 “Comfort Plus” extra legroom economy class seats
- 190 economy class seats
The Queensland Government, which is promoting the new route, states that Delta will increase the service to daily in 2025 and 2026.
Unlike American (which partners with Qantas) or United (which partners with Virgin Australia), Delta has no Australian partner (beyond Rex, which operates regional flights using a fleet of mostly Saab 340 turboprops) so this seems more catered to US traffic than to Australians outside Brisbane or Queensland.
The Subsides At Play
If you were wondering why United Airlines launched service to Brisbane from both San Francisco and Los Angeles, then American Airlines announced service rom Dallas to Brisbane, and now Delta has announced service from Los Angeles, one reason is that the Government of Queensland has allocated $200 million to its “Attracting Aviation Investment Fund.”
It isn’t clear how large of a subsidy is at play for Delta…I won’t speculate…but a $200 million pot is quite large, even if that fund also is used to support Gulf and Asian carriers too. Is the government really dropping hundreds of dollars per seat to BNE?
As for justification, Queensland believes it will bring in visitor spending and create jobs:
The Fund now supports three direct US connections with mainland US carriers to Brisbane including:
- United Airlines from San Francisco, operating since October 2022, supporting 227,000 inbound seats and $151 million in visitor expenditure over three years.
- American Airlines from Dallas Fort Worth, starting October 2024, supporting 140,000 inbound seats and $113 million in visitor expenditure over three years.
- Delta Air Lines from Los Angeles, starting December 2024, supporting 271,000 inbound seats and $208 million in visitor expenditure over three years.
Total seats between the USA and Brisbane in 2024 will be 178,000 seats, rising to 247,000 in 2025.
But is that really the case? Won’t many people take advantage of cheap flights to simply connect though Brisbane to places like Melbourne, Perth, or Sydney?
One thing is certain: Chinese demand to Brisbane (and Australia in general) was off the charts prior to the pandemic and has not recovered. It may never recover. It makes sense that Queensland is looking toward other sources to bring in tourism and associated spending.
“Additional direct access from Los Angeles into Brisbane is a massive opportunity for our tourism industry and while the United States is one of our biggest markets, we have so far only recovered around three quarters of our 2019 numbers, so we have gains to make to recover and then grow beyond pre-pandemic visitor levels.”
Notice that United’s LAX-BNE flight is missing from the subsidy list above. That’s because United Airlines ended its seasonal service between LAX and BNE on February 14, 2024, almost six weeks earlier than planned.
While United has not offered a reason for the premature route suspension, it does suggest that even with subsidies the demand is not there for so much capacity from LAX-BNE. Delta’s move is in part meant to further dissuade Untied from relaunching this route.
CONCLUSION
Delta will launch nonstop 3x-weekly service between Los Angeles and Brisbane starting on December 4, 2024. If the route, backed by subsidies from the Queensland government, goes well, Delta will make it a daily flight the following season. Meanwhile, United Airlines has suspended its LAX-BNE route, suggesting that subsides alone may not be enough to create further demand in a market that may already be approaching saturation.
You write about United a lot. Don’t underestimate the messaging that Delta is sending to United about LAX and Asia-Pacific as a whole.
There has been oodles of internet ink spilled touting UA’s supremacy and DL’s supposed weakness but UA faltered on its LAX-BNE route, DL is in rebuilding mode across the Pacific for a number of very good reasons, and DL would love to hold up a route where it jumped in and grew its LAX portfolio at UA’s expense.
There will be more of these incursions between the two even though DL and UA have largely done its thing and stayed out of each other’s way while DL has butted heads with AA
Shut up man. We are sick of you on multiple blogs. Just shut up.
@Tim Dunn I thought you didn’t know who Matthew Klint was? According to one of your comments last week on another blog. Yet here you are.
Yes a seasonal, 3 times per week route that is only operating because of a subsidy means that United needs to worry about Delta overtaking them in Asia-Pacific.
United is bigger than DL and AA combined and has 150 787s on firm order, with deliveries starting in a few months.
On the one hand you say it’s no big deal that UA is the largest across the Pacific, but then you also say that DL is going to challenge UA’s dominance
And we’ve also discussed it before, but DL has the most fortress hubs, giving them fortress hub pricing their hubs, along with low CPEs at those large hubs.
It’s not that people pay a premium to fly DL, otherwise they wouldn’t have closed those stations where UA continues to run circles around DL.
DL is getting the largest available subsidy likely because the A350-900 is larger than the B787-9 that AA and UA use and also has the capacity to carry 20 tonnes of cargo, a number that higher take off weight A350-900s can do but some of DL’s earlier A350-900s would struggle to do with a full load. It is a given that there will be many days where DL won’t fill all of the seats so will have more available cargo capacity and the northbound flight is well within the range of any A350.
The primary point is that DL jumped on the subsidy bandwagon – which amounts to up to AUD 750/passenger for the latest AA and DL flights.
The press release also says that DL is “forecast” to increase the route to daily in 2025 and beyond.
As I have noted, including the ex-Latam A350s that are being reconfigured later this year, DL will have up to 16 A350s in its standard international configuration available by the winter of 2025 on top of 12 additional A330-900s which gives DL by far the most widebody growth capacity of the big 3.
And QF is likely the loser as the US carriers use larger airplanes with more premium cabins and more cargo capacity.
If you haven’t considered the very real possibility that there is something wrong with you, it appears that you have the free time to consider this seriously at this point.
Delta has a $2 billion per year advantage over United in profits and almost $4 billion over American on top of the dozens of A350s on order as well as the ex-Latam A350s that will begin conversion to Delta standard cabins. And United does not have a joint venture in Australia. The size of their partner doesn’t make it any more of an advantage.
The bigger question is if Delta is getting incentives. United tried LAX to BNE and cut the season short.
Why do these comments look so familiar…?
An insatiable need for attention. You really have to wonder what the hell happened to him as a child.
I hope Delta is paying him well for this.
The bigger question to be decided during these flights is :can US carriers serve a proper Australian meat pie and espresso?
Simple answer: NO 🙂
Rex Airlines is a very good regional carrier and it partners with Delta. In addition to their Saab 340 fleet, they have 10 B737-800s. I’m based in OOL Gold Coast, and Rex offers outstanding service and no dramas with pricing like Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia.
Agreed. All of these articles mention Rex as being insignificant when actually these days they are a genuine player between the big cities. If you want to get to Sydney or Melbourne they’re more than fine.
Delta is the greatest airline that has ever happened. Every airport would be lucky to have the opportunity to subsidize a nonstop flight. United and American paean Delta, but Delta pees on them.
I miss flying long-haul VA. Very fun cabins up front, especially after their retrofits
This reminds me of that joke. Two drunk rednecks sitting on the roof of the house. One stands up barely able to walk and says, “Watch This!” He jumps and dies. His friend laughs and responds, “You think that’s good, Bubba? Watch this!” Also jumping and dying.
UA pulled the plug early. Clearly the demand is not there. But instead of AA and DL being grateful for the beta they decide instead that they are somehow different. It’s almost hilarious.
Delta made a big mistake in not taking the Northwest name, which is stronger than Delta except in Atlanta and Mississippi. Dumb move.
Northwest flew to Australia in the 1990’s and over the Pacific for decades earlier while the South was still busy with the KKK
I saw your headline, and I thought to myself: you know who will be foaming at the mouth and will be commenting in 3…2…oh wait, there he is.
This Tim guy been posting the same thing on different blogs! Delta PR gor him working overtime lol
Right. God only knows what affliction this guy suffers from. But I bet it’s something hard to pronounce.
Didn’t he say on OMAAT at some point that he has Asperger’s Syndrome?
At least he’s not hiding any longer on Seeking Alpha that he owns Delta stock.
But I guess he thinks his crusade is going to push up Delta’s value…