Delta and Virgin Atlantic plan to add capacity on routes between the UK and US during the winter season.
The two airlines, which started a transatlantic joint venture in January, are planning to raise UK-US capacity by around 2.6% for winter 2014/15 due to “growing demand”.
Delta president Ed Bastian said: “Our primary growth area is London. Heathrow continues to be a bright spot as we have seen our joint venture margins expand by 2.7% for the year-to-date.”
But the Atlanta-based airline added that the rest of the transatlantic market had been “pressured by excess capacity growth”.
Outside the UK, Delta is expecting an overall 1% rise in transatlantic capacity with this growth being focused on “optimising” flights from its US hubs to Paris and Amsterdam – the two major hubs of Air France-KLM, which has a separate joint venture deal with Delta.
Delta is planning to reduce capacity on transatlantic routes such as Russia, Israel and west Africa, that have been affected by “demand volatility” due to events such as the Ukraine and Gaza crises and the Ebola outbreak, which has seen Delta cancel flights to Liberia.
delta.com
virgin-atlantic.com