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Delta Air Lines is making several significant network changes at its New York hub.

The first is that the airline is dropping its shortest route from New York City’s LaGuardia Airport (LGA), as first seen in the Sirius schedule and later confirmed by a carrier spokesperson.

This 101-mile route LGA to Bradley International Airport (BDL) near Hartford, Connecticut, will officially end on October 6.

Delta’s regional affiliate Endeavor Air began the service in 2022 with up to three flights per day. It was downgraded to daily service last June, and is now being cut entirely.

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When it launched, Delta’s New York-to-Hartford route was LaGuardia’s shortest. That title has since been transferred to American Airlines’ New York-to-Philadelphia route, which comes in at just 95 miles.

While Delta’s flight provided the fastest commercial option for travelers from Hartford to New York City, some aviation observers described it as “slot squatting”.

LaGuardia is a slot-controlled airport, meaning that the number of daily departures and arrivals is limited by slot. These slots are usually distributed on a use-it-or-lose-it basis, so airlines must use all the slots in their portfolio or risk losing them to a competitor.

During peak periods, airline schedules are optimized to efficiently utilize all slots in their portfolio. However, during periods of weak demand, airlines sometimes look for low-cost regional flights to “slot squat”. Instead of selling or giving up valuable slots, carriers will fill their schedule during weak demand seasons with cheaper regional operations to use up all their slots.

While Delta may have originally thought there would be enough passengers to profitably fill a 70-seat plane between New York and Hartford several times a day, that experiment appears to have failed.

Now that the airline has freed up some slots that were originally assigned to the Hartford route, Delta will begin service between LGA and Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (CHA) on October 7.

Endeavor Air will operate the 734-mile route with five weekly flights on a 76-seat CRJ-900 regional jet.

Delta last flew between LaGuardia and Chattanooga in March 2020, so this technically represents a restart for the airline.

In addition to the changes at LGA, Delta New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) is cutting two regional routes.

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Delta Oct. 26 will scrap service from JFK to Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) and Montreal-Trudeau International Airport (YUL).

Delta’s New York-to-Montreal route has operated continuously since 2006, except for a brief hiatus during the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, service between New York and Baltimore has been in operation for more than two decades, the Sirium timetable shows.

The Baltimore service provided hundreds of one-stop itineraries connecting travelers in the region via New York. JFK is Delta’s main transatlantic gateway, so travelers based in Baltimore can take a short flight to New York and then connect to Europe and beyond with Delta and SkyTeam partner service.

Like LGA, JFK is a slot-controlled airport. Delta has not (yet) filed any new routes from JFK to use the slots freed up by cutting these two routes.

Whether Delta will add new routes or increase frequencies on existing routes to use the slots remains to be seen. As always, stay tuned to TPG for the latest.

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