Germany’s capital city today gained another long-haul airline.
US carrier Delta has restarted its Berlin-New York JFK service after a gap of six years.
The daily service from convenient Tegel is operated by B767-300 aircraft with 225 seats in a two-class business and economy configuration. (Delta’s Comfort Plus cannot be considered premium economy – the carrier will debut a fully fledged premium economy product on its A350s – see below).
It is a boost for Berlin seeing as this city is totally neglected by Lufthansa mainline (except for domestic flights to Frankfurt and Munich) and boasts few long-haul services.
Quoted by Germany’s airportzentrale.de, Nat Pieper, Delta’s senior VP Alliances, said:
“With this flight, Delta now serves five cities in Germany which is more than any other European market. We have a common history with Berlin and we are looking forward to returning to the capital this summer and expanding our network from Germany.”
This JFK route is also about connectivity as well as serving New York itself.
Delta talks of some 60 connections available once the flight arrives into JFK. These include destinations in North America itself plus Latin America and the Caribbean.
In other news the first of Delta’s A350-900s today made its maiden flight from the Airbus factory at Toulouse.
Delta will initially take delivery of 15 A350s. It will become the first US carrier to operate the aircraft, which it will configure with 32 business, 48 premium economy and 226 economy class seats.
The A350s will not be delivered until July 2017. And European readers will be disappointed to learn that, initially at least, it will be rostered for Delta’s transpacific network starting in October 2017.
