With international travel in full recovery mode, Delta Air Lines on Friday announced that it is launching a new nonstop flight between Los Angeles (LAX) and Auckland, New Zealand, in addition to increasing or adding several other global routes.
The daily flights between New Zealand and Southern California will be a first for Delta, which will be the only U.S. carrier offering the nonstop long-haul route—the flight takes approximately 13 to 14 hours. The service will kick off on October 28, 2023, and will be operated on Airbus A350-900 planes.
The goal with the new Auckland flights and other new and expanded international routes, according to Delta executives, is for the airline “to fully restore its network in 2023” after being forced to significantly reduce its global flight offerings during the pandemic.
Other international service that Delta is adding or expanding includes:
- New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Geneva, Switzerland (new)
- New York’s JFK International Airport to London Gatwick (new)
- New York’s JFK International Airport to Paris (Delta is adding a third daily flight starting May 25)
- New York’s JFK International Airport to Rome (Delta is adding a third daily flight)
- New York’s JFK International Airport to Berlin (restoring pre-existing service)
- Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport to Nice, France (new flight starting May 12)
- Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport to Tel Aviv, Israel (increasing service to daily starting April 16)
For those flying out of LAX, Delta recently unveiled the first phases of its new terminal, T3, with the next phase scheduled to open this spring and featuring a dedicated Delta One check-in area. A Delta One Club is also slated to open in 2024. When the Delta Sky Way at LAX project is finished later this year, Terminals 2 and 3 will be a combined into a single 1.2-million-square-foot terminal with 27 gates and will connect via walking path to the Tom Bradley International Terminal.
JFK is also in the midst of a major transformation, and all Delta operations at JFK have been consolidated to Terminal 4, where travelers can expect to find new gates, a new Delta Sky Club in Concourse A, and a new Delta One Club by early 2024.