The Atlanta-based carrier is making a big play for football fans, adding an impressive 50 nonstop flights and 5,600 seats between Aug. 30 and Dec. 1. Delta will offer flights for many of the season's biggest matchups, and you'll find the full list of new services at the bottom of this post.
Delta says it's adding these flights to meet "high demand from customers ready to cheer on their teams." It remains to be seen how these flights will perform, but the airline likely has extra slack in its schedule to make this move work.
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After all, most of these new flights will be operated during the weekend (outbound on Fridays and return on Sundays) when the airline's schedule might not be as busy, especially on Sundays. In this case, Delta is likely boosting its weekend schedule with some spare planes that probably weren't going to fly anyway.
That said, many of these flights will operate on routes that Delta doesn't typically fly, such as from Birmingham, Alabama, to Oklahoma City; and Tallahassee, Florida, to South Bend, Indiana. Since most of these flights aren't operated to or from a hub, Delta will need to lean on the increased demand from fans to fill its planes.
Fans will likely appreciate that Delta is pulling out all the stops — traveling for some of these matchups might've taken two stops without a nonstop Delta flight — but it remains to be seen how the flights will perform. (I guess we'll get a sense for performance if Delta decides to fly these special one-off routes again next season.)
This isn't the first time that Delta (or its competitors) has added special flights for major events. In years past, Delta has operated one-off flights for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the Super Bowl and more.
Regardless of how each team performs, the real winners are the fans, who will now enjoy nonstop service on routes that once wouldn't have been thought to be possible from a major network airline.
Tickets for all of the new flights will be available for sale through Delta's channels by Monday.
Delta's new round-trip college football routes
- Sept. 1: LSU versus USC in Las Vegas — Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Las Vegas
- Sept. 14: Alabama at Wisconsin — Birmingham to Madison, Wisconsin
- Sept. 21: Tennessee at Oklahoma — Knoxville, Tennessee, to Oklahoma City
- Oct. 5: Tennessee at Arkansas — Knoxville to Northwest Arkansas
- Oct. 12: Ohio State at Oregon — Columbus, Ohio, to Portland, Oregon, and Minneapolis to Eugene, Oregon
- Oct. 19: South Carolina at Oklahoma — Columbia, South Carolina, to Oklahoma City
- Oct. 26: Missouri at Alabama — Kansas City to Birmingham
- Nov. 2: UNC at FSU — Raleigh-Durham to Tallahassee
- Nov. 9: Florida at Texas — Gainesville, Florida, to Austin; Tampa to Austin; and Orlando to Austin
- Nov. 9: Washington at Penn State — Seattle to Pittsburgh
- Nov. 9: Iowa at UCLA — Des Moines to Los Angeles
- Nov. 9: FSU at Notre Dame — Tallahassee to South Bend
- Nov. 16: Texas at Arkansas — Austin to Northwest Arkansas
- Nov. 23: Kentucky at Texas — Lexington, Kentucky, to Austin
- Nov. 23: Alabama at Oklahoma — Birmingham to Oklahoma City and Huntsville, Alabama, to Oklahoma City
- Nov. 30: Oklahoma at LSU — Oklahoma City to Baton Rouge
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