- Atlanta-headquartered Delta Air Lines says it will operate its "largest-ever schedule between South Africa and the US this summer."
- This schedule includes daily flights to Cape Town, thanks to two separate applications which have been the subject of delays and challenges.
- Delta recently announced that it would start its hard-fought-for triangular route – from Atlanta to Johannesburg and Johannesburg to Cape Town – on 2 December.
- Its four-times-weekly triangular route will be complemented by three direct non-stop flights to Cape Town, starting on 17 December.
Atlanta-headquartered Delta Air Lines will begin flying to Cape Town, as part of a seasonal triangular route with Johannesburg, in December. Together with its recently awarded direct non-stop service, Delta will have daily flights to the Mother City before the end of the year.
Delta is rapidly expanding its flight paths connecting the United States and South Africa. This expansion is keenly focused on servicing Cape Town amid a boom in American tourists. In just under three months, the carrier has secured daily Cape Town flights thanks to two separate, hard-fought applications.
Delta's request for Cape Town to be included as part of a triangular route with Atlanta and Johannesburg was lodged in 2020. The airline requested "year-round service with seasonal flexibility to tailor capacity to demand during off-peak periods."
It took almost two years – and much back-and-forth – for this to be approved, with the US blaming the South African government for the delay. In a tit-for-tat response to South Africa's alleged stalling of Delta's application, the US transportation department denied coterminalisation rights previously afforded to South African Airways (SAA).
This triangular route was eventually approved in April 2022. Flights departing Atlanta will first land at Johannesburg's OR Tambo and then in Cape Town before returning to the US. Importantly, this route is only for international travel, meaning that passengers cannot fly from Johannesburg to Cape Town without travelling to or from the US.
Delta, on Friday, confirmed that this triangular route would start on 2 December. Flights will operate four times a week, departing Atlanta on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. The carrier will be using its Airbus A350 to complete this route, with Cape Town a vital refuelling stop on the way back to the US.
The confirmation of this triangular route comes just after Delta announced its direct non-stop service to Cape Town. This application, lodged by Delta in February to run concurrently with its bid for the triangular route, was equally fraught with challenges, especially from competing US carrier United Airlines.
The two competing US carriers spent months locked in a back-and-forth war of words before an agreement between America and South Africa was finally reached. This agreement granted additional flight frequencies, which saw both airlines getting an equal share of Cape Town: three weekly flights each.
Together with the three weekly non-stop direct flights from Atlanta to Cape Town, scheduled to start on 17 December, the triangular routing will take Delta's Mother City roster to seven weekly flights during the height of the busy summer season.
"As demand for travel increases, we'll be offering our largest-ever schedule between South Africa and the US this summer," said Jimmy Eichelgruen, Delta's director of sales for Africa, the Middle East and India, in a statement on Friday.