Delta Capacity between New York and South Florida

[adam613]

So in looking at flight schedules this week, I noticed that Delta has severely cut back direct flights between New York and Fort Lauderdale. They used to send four 767s per day from LGA to FLL, along with a few 737s and the occasional 757, and there were about 10 757s a day between JFK and FLL. Now, there are only four flights a day on each route, and all four LGA flights are MD-80s. But it's not like there was any shortage of demand, and AA, Continental, and JetBlue seem to be doing quite well (7 flights per day per airline from at least one of our three airports to either MIA or FLL).

What gives? Why would Delta cut back on a goldmine like LGA-FLL? Or are they just sending everyone through Hell, I mean Atlanta, now?

[Art at ISP]

LGA FLL is no gold mine. In fact the plane can be full and they can lose money.

Florida routes from the northeast are the most competitive routes in the industry, and fares are historically among the lowest. You could have a plane filled to 110% capacity and still lose money.

I think perhaps DL is seeing the light and allocating resources to markets which are more profitable. There may be the demand, but reducing capacity drives fares up...not dramatically necessarily but just enough to make the difference between red and black.

Also consider the month of the schedule you're looking at--from the holidays through March or Easter they usually bump up the schedule to Florida.

Or perhaps DL is just giving some ground on the snowbird express....

[T-Bird76]

The 767 hasn't been to LGA in a decent amount of time and with Delta's intl expansion many of those 767ER's are now flying Intl routes, also Delta returned a good amount of Non ER 767s so the psychical amount of 767s they have to use on routes like LGA-FLL have been diminished. When I was in Jacksonville I was very surprised to see Delta flying at 767 from Jacksonville to ATL, but it was packed.

[MarkLawrence]

Looking at it from a FLL perspective - yes - there are MD80s and B738s coming down from JFK, LGA and BDL - I'm not sure what the load factors are on those flights. What we are seeing a great deal of at the moment is B764s and B752s from ATL a lot - yesterday for example, I think there were 3 B764s into FLL from ATL - the rest were B752s. Maybe they are banking more on the routes through ATL rather than the direct ones.. just my 0.02c

[JetBlueAirwaysFan]

Load factors between LGA and FLL are fairly decent. They are better than JFK's load factors, but not by much. They are in the 80-90 percent range. According to my sources, I think JetBlue took some of the thunder from the JFK FLL load factors since they're load factors are higher than Delta's. The same goes for JetBlue's LGA FLL route, their load factors are higher than Delta's in that market too. JetBlue's load factors in both of these markets are in the 89-92 percent range.
Could DL's decrease in NYC FLL load factors be due to traveler's favoring another airline like JetBlue? Or is Delta just trying to mayber cut costs?
Also, according to my sources, the NYC PBI load factors are not as high as I thought they would be...they are in the 70-80 percent range. I would have thought atleast 85%.