Delta Air Lines Requests Waivers For Cuba And China Routes

On 20 February 2024, US legacy carrier Delta Air Lines filed for a dormancy waiver to postpone some of its flights to Cuba and China. Both of these requests would allow the airline to drop its routes to both destinations for the upcoming summer season and potentially resume them should market conditions improve next year.

Namely, the carrier requested a full season dormancy waiver on its allocated flight slots from Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL) and Miami International Airport (MIA) to José Martí International Airport (HAV), which, if granted, would be in effect between 31 March 2024 and 26 October 2024. The airline primarily cited depressed demand in the market as a key factor motivating its dormancy waiver request.

Additionally, the airline also requested a full-season dormancy waiver for flights for 32 out of its 42 allocated frequencies from the United States to China. The carrier’s waiver, should the Department of Transportation (DOT) grant its request, would include all the dates between 31 March 2024 and 26 October 2024.

Two years in a row

It is no secret that Delta has struggled in recent years to expand operations to Cuba. Last year, according to the airline’s filing to the DOT, the carrier sought out a similar full-season dormancy waiver for its seven weekly allocated frequencies from Atlanta to Cuba.

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The carrier also requested a similar dormancy waiver for its routes from Miami to Havana, with a request to delay the start of operations from 26 March to 10 April 2023, according to Aviacionline. These routes would eventually commence operations, and today the only service operated by Delta from Havana is a year-round service to Miami.

Photo: Markus Mainka | Shutterstock

According to the airline, the ultimate goal of pursuing these dormancy waivers was to ensure that the carrier could smoothly and effectively restart services when the market’s conditions improved. This was articulated in Delta’s motion as follows:

“Delta is looking forward to reintroducing critical competition in the largest U.S.-Cuba market of all, Miami-Havana as well as, eventually, reconnecting Atlanta, its largest hub and the busiest airport in the world, with Havana.”

Struggles in the Chinese market

One of the main factors prompting Delta’s dormancy request for its flights from the United States to China likely originates with a challenging competitive disadvantage that American airlines are at in the market. Specifically, the closure of Russian airspace has prevented many US airlines from flying the most direct routes from their American hubs to China, wasting expensive fuel and increasing flight times.

Chinese airlines, however, are free to fly the most direct routes over Russian airspace, saving precious fuel in the process and thus offering better operating economics. For US-based carriers like Delta, competing has proven quite difficult and is one of the many factors why US airlines primarily do not operate flights from the East Coast to China, but Chinese carriers fly to cities on the Eastern seaboard like New York and Washington, D.C.

Currently, Delta flies from Shanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG) to its fortress hubs at Seattle (SEA) and Detroit (DTW). Additionally, service from Los Angeles (LAX) is set to resume this October.