I can’t say I’m terribly surprised, but Delta Air Lines is significantly scaling back its German network. Late last year, the airline cut service to one German airport, and now the airline is discontinuing service to another German airport…
Delta axes service to two German cities
As flagged by @IshrionA, Delta appears to be discontinuing its route between Atlanta (ATL) and Stuttgart (STR) as of October 27, 2024. For context, the airline currently flies this route on a year-round basis using Boeing 767-300ERs. However, reservations have been closed as of the start of the winter season, all the way through the end of the schedule.
This spring, Delta had announced plans to make the Stuttgart service seasonal for this upcoming winter, to reflect soft demand in winter. However, the airline is now eliminating this service altogether, and has also closed reservations for next summer.
This comes exactly one year after Delta cuts its service to Dusseldorf (DUS), also out of Atlanta. That route was most recently operated 3x weekly, with a Boeing 767-300ER.
Delta continues to fly to three cities in Germany, including year-round flights to Frankfurt (FRA) and Munich (MUC), plus seasonal flights to Berlin (BER).
Two German cities lose transatlantic links
Delta pulling out of both Dusseldorf and Stuttgart is a pretty meaningful development. For one, these are routes with a lot of history. Delta has been flying to Stuttgart literally for decades, while Delta flew to Dusseldorf between 2006 and 2023, aside from some service pauses during the pandemic.
What’s noteworthy is that for both Dusseldorf and Stuttgart, Delta provided the only transatlantic connections, so both of these airports are now left without flights to North America.
In the case of Stuttgart, the airport never had much transatlantic service, and I have to imagine a large motivation for the Atlanta route was corporate contracts with Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, both of which have their headquarters in Stuttgart.
Dusseldorf is a bit different of a story. It has a lot of business and also has a generally wealthy population. Back in the day, Dusseldorf had quite a bit of transatlantic service. For one, airberlin operated many routes from there, before it went bust. Beyond that, Lufthansa even operated transatlantic flights (with first class) back in the day, including to Chicago (ORD) and Newark (EWR).
I suspect Delta cutting these routes reflects a few factors:
- In general, business travel just hasn’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels, and I imagine these routes were heavily reliant on that, rather than leisure demand
- We’ve increasingly seen airlines try to integrate rail and air packages, and both Dusseldorf and Stuttgart are fairly short train rides from Frankfurt
- Ultimately costs in the airline industry have gone up significantly in recent years, and that makes many marginal routes harder to justify
Bottom line
Last year, Delta canceled Dusseldorf flights, and now Delta will cancel Stuttgart flights. These were the only transatlantic links for two German cities, so this is of course a significant loss for consumers. Given that both of these cities can be reached by train from Frankfurt within a couple of hours, I can’t say I’m surprised. But still, it’s sad to see two unique routes to Germany cut…
What do you make of Delta’s service reductions in Germany?