Effective February 15, Delta is increasing its service between Chicago and New York. Delta’s domestic routes of late seem to be paralleling their competition. Jetblue expands to Chicago, Delta follows. US Airways makes a bid for Delta, they announce first New York to Phoenix service and then Salt Lake City to Charlotte service.
Delta will be adding seven new departures between LaGuardia and Chicago’s Midway airport, operating out of the Marine Air Terminal. They are referring to it as ‘shuttle-like’ service. The amenities for business travelers of the Marine Air Terminal may attract passengers. The service will replace service from LaGuardia to O’Hare so that Delta can use its slots at O’Hare to add five daily flights between O’Hare and JFK to challenge Jetblue.
The Midway flights will operate using Shuttle America’s Embraer 170 aircraft configured in a two-class configuration…six first class seats and sixty four economy seats. The O’Hare flight, as they have up until now, be operated by Comair using 50 and 70 seater Bombardier CRJ aircraft.
Delta’s service from LaGuardia to Midway will compete with ATA’s service. ATA’s codeshare with Southwest as well as its own vacation routes from Midway gives it a lot of through traffic ability from LaGuardia. However, Delta’s presence at Midway is limited. Their biggest advantage on this route will be point-to-point passengers who want the power of the Delta name with the advantages of going from LaGuardia to Midway over O’Hare or the new increase in O’Hare to JFK service.
On the other hand, if their LaGuardia to O’Hare service was so successful, they wouldn’t be discontinuing it to offer additional JFK flights. And while their E170 service could very well compete with a Jetblue service to JFK, because of the onward international connections, we doubt a CRJ can as easily.