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Delta Air Lines is adding more flights next yr at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, in a bid to achieve market share in considered one of the country’s fastest-growing airports.
The carrier plans so as to add 11 nonstop flights from Austin in April, giving it almost 50 peak-day flights, the airline said Friday.
Flight additions include Midland-Odessa and McAllen in Texas, in addition to Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina, Nashville and Cincinnati. The announcement comes weeks after rival American Airlines said it planned to chop 21 Austin routes.
It can also route connecting passengers through the hub, a shift for the Atlanta-based carrier.
“That is the primary time we’ll be using Austin as a connecting point to access our network with the addition of McAllen and Midland,” Eric Beck, managing director of network planning, said in an interview. “For us here at Delta, Texas has historically been a white space for opportunity on our network.”
Austin’s population has grown rapidly lately and the town has drawn investment from big corporations comparable to Apple, Tesla and IBM.
Beck said no single company drove the choice to expand in Austin. But “over time as we discuss with our corporate accounts and look to where they’re traveling that we haven’t got service,” McAllen and Midland, a base for the oil-rich Permian Basin, topped the list, he added.
Beck said each cities have strong business communities and tourism attractions.
Austin’s airport served greater than 7.1 million passengers last yr, up 11% from 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, in keeping with aviation analytics firm Cirium. Passenger counts fell 5% within the U.S. overall during that period.
Delta had a market share of near 14% in Austin as of September, behind Southwest Airlines‘ 40% share and American’s 22%, in keeping with airport data.
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