Atlanta Hasn’t Had So Many European Flights Since 2006

Atlanta has up to 30 daily Europe flights this summer.

Everyone knows that Atlanta is the world’s biggest airport. While it performs extraordinarily strongly domestically, it is obviously less dominant to Europe. Indeed, analysis of OAG schedules for this coming summer reveals that Atlanta ranks seventh of the 41 US airports with Europe flights. Nonetheless, thanks to Delta’s coming Atlanta-Nice, building on other previously revealed routes, Atlanta is gearing up for its best summer ever by seats for sale and best in 17 years by flights.

Atlanta to Europe: summer 2023

Atlanta expects 5,980 European departing flights between March 26th and October 28th, when airlines in the Northern Hemisphere switch to summer schedules. That’s based on examining the latest OAG data as of January 23rd, and it is, as always, subject to change. That is up by a fifth over summer 2022 (S22), +10% versus S19, and +6% over S17, the previous best in the past decade.

The nearly 6,000 departures fall short of surpassing the previous high of 6,196 held 17 years ago in S06. However, if seats for sale are considered instead, Atlanta has had just shy of 1.7 million planned, more than any other peak season. It is principally driven by Delta’s growth, plus that of Air France and Turkish Airlines.

Click here for Atlanta-Istanbul flights.

Source of data: OAG.

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Up to 30 daily Europe flights

While Atlanta has an average of 28 European departures daily in S23, there’s a maximum of 30 held on just 13 occasions between July and September. Not as many as the maximum of 32 in S06, but it is getting there. Various new and resuming routes have contributed, as well as higher frequencies, such as with Turkish Airlines.

Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Simple Flying.

Now 18 European routes

Hardly surprisingly, Delta has 70.1% of Atlanta-Europe flights. The market also sees Air France (9.3%), Virgin (6.1%), British Airways (3.6%), KLM (3.6%), Lufthansa (3.6%), and Turkish Airlines (3.6%). Given Virgin is to become a SkyTeam carrier, that one alliance has 89.1% of Europe-bound services. In all, Atlanta has 18 Europe routes, as summarized below in order of flights:

Click here for Atlanta-Paris flights.

Nice is back for the third time

You’ll see from the above table that Atlanta-Nice returns after a 17-year absence. Delta last had service between May and September 2006. Before that, it was linked between May and October 1993. Now it is back for the third time – although the local market had fewer than 10,000 roundtrip passengers in 2019, very few for a long-haul, showing how it’ll rely on transit passengers. The schedule is as follows, with all times local:

• Atlanta-Nice: DL24, 21:00-12:20+1 (9h 20m block time)
• Nice-Atlanta: DL25, 11:00-15:25 (10h 25m)

Click here for Atlanta-Nice flights.

Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Simple Flying.

Aircraft switch in Nice

Notice that Nice-Atlanta takes off before Atlanta-Nice arrives. That’s because the operating 767-400ER will arrive from JFK before flying to Atlanta and vice-versa. It simply switches in France.

Will you be flying Atlanta-Europe this summer? If so, let us know where you’re going by commenting.