Delta Adding More Services Out Of Boston

Delta New Boston Services

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In its latest batch of schedule updates Delta has clearly decided to give Boston a little bit more love. There are two new routes starting up this winter (one is even a short-haul international flight!), an old route is being restarted in the summer and an existing route is seeing frequencies significantly increased.

[HT: Routes Online]

Boston – Nashville **New Route**

From 6 November 2016 Delta is launching a Boston – Nashville route using one of its regional jets. The planned schedule for this new daily service is as follows:

DL3431 BOS 11:15 – 13:25 BNA (Daily CRJ-900 service)
DL3505 BNA 07:00 – 10:40 BOS (Daily CRJ-900 service)

It appears as if this service is here to stay past the winter season as, although there’s a flight number change at some point, it’s still available for booking into July 2017.

The Delta CRJ-900 comes with 12 First Class seats, 12 Delta Comfort+ seats and 52 regular Economy Class seats.

Regional jets are normally something that travelers look to avoid if at all possible (understandably) but, if you can get a seat in Comfort+ or even score an upgrade to First Class then the CRJ-900 isn’t too bad at all.

Screen Shot 2016-08-09 at 17.27.14Delta CRJ-900 seat info courtesy of SeatGuru

Boston – Montego Bay (Jamaica) **New Route**

From 17 December 2016 Delta will commence service between Boston and Montego Bay in Jamaica (great for escaping the Boston winter!). The 1x/week service is set to be operated by an A319 aircraft on the following schedule:

DL1709 BOS 10:25 – 14:45 MBJ (Sat)
DL1684 MBJ 15:45 – 19:54 BOS (Sat)

Just like the new Nashville service this route looks as if it’s here to stay (at least for the time being) with reservations open into July 2017.

Delta operates the A319 in two different configurations and the aircraft assigned to the Montego Bay route come fitted with 12 First Class seats, 18 Comfort+ seat and 96 standard economy class seats.

delta-airbus-a319-seat-mapDelta Airbus A319 seat map (click to enlarge in new window)

I’m not a fan of the A319 on American Airlines and, based on the seat dimensions supplied by seatguru, I doubt I’d like Delta’s version either. First Class looks fine with 36″ of seat pitch and 21″ wide seats…but there’s only 12 of those seats. The majority of the seats are in Economy Class and those come with only 30″ of seat pitch and are just 17″ wide – not for me!

Boston – San Francisco

From summer 2017 Delta plans to once again offer a service between Boston and San Francisco.

From 8 June 2017 the airline will be offering two flights between the cities – one on a daily basis while the other will operate 6x/week.

san-francisco-oakland-bay-bridgeSan Francisco and the Oakland Bay Bridge

The proposed schedule looks as follows:

DL1893 BOS 07:15 – 10:56 SFO (Daily)
DL387 BOS 17:00 – 20:45 SFO (Daily except for Saturday)

DL1893 SFO 11:45 – 20:31 BOS (Daily)
DL387 SFO 21:30 – 06:18+1 day BOS (Daily except for Saturday)

Delta will operate this route with Boeing 757-200 aircraft which are configured with 20 First Class seats, 29 Comfort+ seats and 150 regular economy seats.

Just as with the A319 mentioned earlier, the First Class seating looks spacious enough (21″ seat width and 37″ seat pitch) but the Economy seats with as little as 17″ of seat width and just 30″ of seat pitch aren’t a product I’d look forward to booking on a 5+ hour journey.

Boston – Seattle

BostonBoston

This isn’t so much a new route as an increase in frequency. Delta already offers a daily Boston – Seattle service but, from 8 June 2017, the airline will double its capacity on the route by offering a second daily service.

From 8 June 2017 the schedule is expected to look like this:

DL156 BOS 07:15 – 10:30 SEA (Daily service)
DL1243 BOS 16:45 – 20:04 SEA (Daily service) **New Service**

DL156 SEA 11:30 – 19:55 BOS (Daily service)
DL1055 SEA 21:15 – 05:14+1 day BOS (Daily service) **New Service**

Both flight pairs will be operated by Delta’s 737 aircraft configured with 16 First Class seats, 18 Comfort+ seats and 126 regular Economy Class seats.

Delta’s 737s appear to be marginally better for Economy Class passengers than the A319 or 757 aircraft with 31″ of seat pitch (as opposed to just 30″),….but there’s still only a miserly 17″ of seat width for a population with an ever-growing waist line.

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Bottom Line

all of this is a nice bit of expansion from Delta and should be pleasing (and hopefully useful) to any Boston-based Delta loyalists.

This should also have a nice effect on pricing as Delta will be going up against United on the San Francisco route and Southwest on the Nashville route (currently the only operators of non-stop services on those routes).

The extra flight to Seattle is just another small escalation in hostilities with Alaska (supposedly a Delta partner!) but it’s still good to see as the only winners in all of this should be consumers.

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