Delta to leave Gatwick?

Delta will leave Gatwick completely after many,many years (30?), on April 18th 2012 by withdawing the remaining Gatwick – Atlanta operation. Curiously this service is regularly overbooked even on days when their Heathrow services have available seats. One answer possibly, would be the low yield gained on passengers using this service.

Biggles

Poor Gatwick, no Air Asia X, Qatar Airways and now no Delta!

The new flights from HK Airlines, Vietnam, Korean and Air China won’t really offset those long-haul losses because they were all daily, whereas all the new routes are just 2/3 times a week.

Becky, the first two A330s are in use on some transatlantic routes from Glasgow, Manchester and Gatwick (mostly MAN) there are 7 left to be delivered (several already committed to LHR according to their PR, replacing all A340-300s rather than creating lots of new capacity) that doesn’t really leave the old Gatwick fleet in an exciting position.

Virgin claim to be expanding but the way they lease out aircraft and slots make this claim ludicrous.

Its was an obvious cost cutting move. Having two operations in London doubles cost. DL (and AA and TW and CO) all set up shop in Gatwick when they could not get into LHR. Now the playing field at LHR has been levelled, it makes sense to concentrate ops there. Also AF/KL/SU/KE are LHR centric so for Skyteam connectionhas to be LHR. I expect Delta will draw more customers by offering onward connection from US via LHR rather than the bucket and spade brigade originating Gatwick.

BrianBeesley by “bucket and spade” I was referring to the holiday market which LGW had traditionally been associated with. I think the changes at Gatwick will start to change this perception but my experience has been that LHR is seen as the premier airport in a similar way to JFK in NYC whereas LGW is mroe like EWR and LCY I guess being more conveinent and rectricted would LGA.
When you look at Airline initiatives I think you need to look at the economy there are in and the business cycle. Developing countries are expecting growth in demand and consequently are looking for extra capacity, those markets previously seen as developed are still struggling to generate growth and the curent business climate is all about cutting costs not growing business.
As regards connections, though there may be many more Uk destinatiosn fromm lGW, how many of these are Sky Team?

When Delta leave Gatwick, does that mean an end to comp access for Skyteam Platinum card holders to the No 1 Traveller Lounge in North Terminal? This is a great bonus and incentive to use Gatwick when flying with other airlines (e.g.. BA Domestic).

I changed to Delta when Continental left LGW – now I guess that I have to brave Heathrow again