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Before the coronavirus pandemic, Delta operated over 300 flights across multiple routes to two cities in China – Beijing and Shanghai – but since the world began getting back to normal, Delta has been taking its time getting its old routes to China back up and running.
In August last year, Delta told us that it would finally relaunch its Los Angeles – Shanghai service in March 2024, and then as 2023 drew to a close, that relaunch date was quietly pushed back to July 2024, and as far as I can tell, no further news on the fate of this route has been forthcoming from Delta.
Well, it now looks like Delta won’t be bringing back the LAX – Shanghai route in July 2024 either because a recent schedule update now shows this route as returning no earlier than 27 October 2024.
This is the currently published LAX-Shanghai schedule for winter 2024/25.
DL39 LAX 09:20 – 15:20 PVG (Tue, Wed, Fri & Sun)
DL38 PVG 17:30 – 13:20 LAX (Mon, Tue, Thu & Sat)
If this information is to be believed, Delta will operate this route 4x/week using its A350-900XWB aircraft which feature the following layout:
- 32 Business Class seats
- 48 Premium Economy seats
- 36 Delta Comfort+ Economy Class seats
- 190 Economy Class seats
The problem is that while Delta appears to be prepared to sell seats on this route …
… it doesn’t look like the airline has loaded all the fare codes into its booking engine, and that’s often a sign that it isn’t fully committed to operating the route on the dates shown.
To my untrained eye, this looks like Delta kicking the can down the road (so to speak) and simply using the October re-start date as a placeholder for this route.
I don’t think anyone should be looking at Delta’s schedules and feeling confident that LAX-Shanghai will definitely be back in October 2024.
Yes, the route *may* relaunch on 27 October as the schedules currently show, but given Delta’s recent history with this route, it would take a brave person to stake any serious money on that actually happening.
Bottom line
The latest schedules show that Delta’s plan to relaunch its Los Angeles – Shanghai route in July 2024 has been scrapped and that as things stand, the earliest this route will resume will be in October.
As things stand, however, that re-launch date looks far from certain, so anyone hoping to book this route when it finally comes back should probably not be getting their hopes up just yet.
[HT: Aeroroutes]
