Over the last two years, many U.S.-based airlines have seriously rethought their European networks.
While airlines have formerly prioritized running flights from more cities in the U.S. to large capitals such as Paris and London, Delta (DAL) , United Airlines (UAL) and American Airlines (AAL) have all recently launched spates of new routes to smaller cities popular with tourists.
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Many of these cities are in regions visitors have previously needed to access either by train or flight by a regional airline, including Italy’s Naples, Portugal’s Porto and Faro, and Spain’s Seville and Bilbao.
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Christmas markets are getting more popular each year
On Nov. 19, United released numbers showing a 30% spike in travel to different European destinations compared to 2019 and 10% from 2023. Demand is highest for destinations known for their Christmas markets during the holiday season such as Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and certain parts of France.
“The European Christmas markets have become even more popular in recent years, and no airline makes it easier than United to get away and visit for the holidays,” United’s director of Atlantic and Hawaii planning, Darren Scott, said in a statement.”Stay for a week or make it a long weekend with nonstop flights and easy connections to more than 130 European cities, including the legendary markets in Dresden, Strasbourg, Vienna and Cologne.”
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United offers direct flights to Munich, Frankfurt, Brussels, Zurich, Amsterdam and Edinburgh, among others from many U.S. cities while there are also connected flights to smaller cities such as Cologne, Helsinki and Strasbourg through its network partner Lufthansa (DLAKF) . The airline says its holiday network running until mid-January will include 16 flights to European cities with holiday markets (most in Germany and German-speaking countries but also countries such as France, Belgium and Scotland).
This year, United has been taking strides to differentiate itself from “big three” competitors Delta (DAL) and American Airlines (AAL) with a major focus on rare and unconventional destinations.
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This is why United is launching so many flights to smaller international destinations
At the start of October, the airline made a big announcement about eight new routes to cities such as Greenland’s Nuuk, Spain’s Bilbao and Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia — all cities that have very limited direct service from the U.S. but all have also been seeing significant increases in tourist interest.
Delta, meanwhile, recently moved in to fill the U.S.-Africa travel market by bringing back a New York-Lagos route that was put on pause in 2022. At the same, time Delta is switching to larger planes for its existing flights to Ghana and South Africa.
“Delta currently operates daily service between Atlanta and Lagos and, with the resumption of daily New York-JFK service, will offer a total of 14 weekly flights to Nigeria in December through the first half of January and ten weekly flights for the remainder of winter 2024,” the airline said in May 2024.
The flight between New York and the Ghanaian capital of Accra will be run on the 281-seat Airbus A330-900neo (EADSF) , while the daily flights to Johannesburg and Cape Town from Atlanta are currently being transitioned to the Airbus A350-900 to accommodate up to 350 passengers at a time.
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