Back in February Delta announced that it would expand its flying from Dallas-Love Field due to an agreement to lease a gate from Alaska Airlines. The Atlanta based airline announced that they would add service to both LAX and LGA 2x daily to complement their current 5x daily service to Atlanta. Both the LAX and LGA flights were scheduled to be operated with Airbus A320 aircraft.
Over the weekend, Delta pulled the upcoming DAL-LGA flights from its upcoming schedule, just six weeks after initially announcing the route. Though the airline is pulling the flights, they are still planning to grow at Dallas-Love. In place of the two New York-LaGuardia flights, they will operate a third daily frequency to LAX and a sixth daily frequency to Atlanta.
It is being reported that the airline isn’t giving up on the route altogether but rather “delaying” service. Dallas based travelers can still fly Delta to New York-LaGuardia and New York-JFK from nearby Dallas/Ft. Worth International.
If Delta eventually does operate this service, it will be interesting to see what capacity cuts are made in order to allow for that. Dallas-Love is currently capped at 20 gates and Delta was engaged in a years long legal battle with Southwest over their shared use of Gate 15.
Delta is able to add the 4x daily flights as a result of a settlement that was reached, allowing them to operate from the airport until 2028 by leasing one of Alaska’s two gates acquired from the Virgin America merger. Delta will have exclusive use of Gate 11 going forward, though 9x daily is pushing gate utilization and turn times, so it will be interesting to see what they do moving forward.
