When it comes to case studies around expansion and wavering tourism demand, no city has served as a better example than Austin.
When the Texas capital became a relocation hotspot during the covid-19 outbreak, airlines such as American Airlines (AAL) , Virgin Atlantic, Spirit Airlines and Lufthansa all launched a spate of new flights to Austin — then canceled them when demand ebbed.
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Related: American Airlines becomes latest to pull back from this once-popular city
Originally offering a peak of 100 departures from the city, American Airlines recently followed 21 route cuts in November 2023 by discontinuing service from Las Vegas, New Orleans and Orlando as well as seasonal flights from Palm Springs and Reno last September.
"Austin remains an important market for American as we continuously evaluate our network," the airline said in a statement after the first round of cuts.
Delta 'committed to Austin,' launches 5 new flights
But while overestimating demand out of Austin is a common story for airlines, big three competitor Delta Air Lines (DAL) is going the other way with five new flights to the city from various pockets of the U.S.: a daily flight from Florida's Panama City launching on March 9, routes from Memphis and Indianapolis starting May 7, and flights from San Francisco and Tampa starting June 8.
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"Delta has made its commitment to Austin known, and these new routes and the 55 peak-day departures planned for summer 2025 reaffirm that," Delta's senior vice president of network planning, Joe Esposito, said in a statement.
"This is on top of the already 20% seat capacity increase we put into service in April connecting Austin to new destinations in major corporate and leisure markets both within Texas and outside the state — onward throughout our global network."
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Austin is an interesting case study for airlines
The Panama City, Memphis and Indianapolis routes will be run on Embraer 175 (ERJ) planes through Delta's SkyWest partnership, while the Tampa and San Francisco flights will run on Airbus A220-300s. (EADSY)
In 2024, Delta also launched new routes to Austin from cities like Nashville and Midland/Odessa and Harlingen in Texas.
Austin has, in general, been an interesting case study for the airline business model. The city is still a very popular domestic tourist destination and the population is growing. But the drop from formerly skyrocketing rates means that the strategy of throwing a bunch of new flights into the city has not worked out for most airlines.
Virgin Atlantic canceled a flashy new route to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport from London's Heathrow at the start of 2024 while Spirit Airlines also cut 13 flights from cities such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Dallas-Fort Worth the following March.
"We've adored flying our customers to Austin and experiencing this wonderful city of music and culture, but demand in the tech sector is not set to improve in the near term, with corporate demand at 70% of 2019 levels," Virgin Atlantic Chief Commercial Officer Juha Jarvinen said in a statement when announcing the route cut in October 2023.
"Therefore, sadly we made the tough decision to withdraw services."
