Delta Air Lines in Texas | Where Are They?
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Aviation in Texas
Texas is arguably one of America’s most important states. After California, it’s the second largest economy in the nation. If it were an independent country, it would rank 8th globally. Additionally, Texas comes in second in population and land area. It’s also growing - fast. It added more people than any other state in 2024, and projections indicate that Texas will surpass California as the most populous state by 2045.
Texas is also a huge state aviation - wise. Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, the state’s busiest airport, is the third busiest in the world, while Houston’s Intercontinental Airport comes in “only” in 43rd place. Both Houston and Dallas have secondary airports (Hobby and Love Field respectively), which serve as major hubs for Southwest, who alongside American call the Dallas Metro home.
Both cities’ main airports are dominated by these carriers. American has a 65% market share in Dallas and United has a 77.4% market share in Houston. American and United use their Texan superhubs not only to connect passengers across America but to access the highly lucrative Caribbean/Latin American market. American has a larger operation of Latin American flights out of their Miami hub, but for United, Houston is where the vast majority of these routes come from.
Where’s Delta?
Notably absent with a major hub in the state is Delta, the other airline of the Big Three. Delta has a presence in Dallas, Houston, Galveston, El Paso, San Antonio, but really only with service to their hub airports. Delta is most certainly in the business of connecting passengers in the South, particularly the Southeast; their Atlanta hub dwarfs Dallas and Houston in scale. However, they fail to capture much of the Southwest market, including highly lucrative states like Arizona and Nevada. They do manage to get some of this traffic from their hubs in Salt Lake City and to a lesser extent Los Angeles, but it doesn’t really compare to their competitors.
Austin Ambitions
Delta’s lack of a major presence in the Lone Star State is changing - fast.
Austin is Texas’ fourth largest city, and it’s capital. It’s located roughly at the center of the Texas Triangle, 90 minutes from San Antonio, 2 and a half hours from Houston, and 3 hours from Dallas. Austin is also one of America’s fastest growing cities, with an average growth rate of 2.39% annually. As such, its air travel demand is increasing, and Delta is stepping in to fill the rising volume.
Beyond their hub routes to cities like Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Seattle from Austin, they operate to some rather unusual destinations - Milwaukee, Memphis, Palm Springs, and Indianapolis, just to name a few. Additionally, they’re trying to get some of the lucrative inter-Texas traffic with routes to secondary cities like Midland, McAllen, and Odessa.
Starting in December of this year, Delta will take a major leap forward in establishing their presence in Austin with their first international routes from the city, to the Mexican vacation hotspots of Cancun and San José del Cabo.
Their rapid growth shows no signs of slowing. They’re neck and neck with Southwest when it comes to the dominant carrier in Austin, and they’re building a SkyClub at AUS. In an interview with The Points Guy, Delta Senior Vice President of Network Planning Paul Baldoni said "We’ve had great success in Austin. We like the demographic trends we see in Austin. So, that will continue to be the primary focus. We’re getting up to now close to 80 departures a day [along with our partners]. When we get too close to around 120 daily departures, you start building some of that connectivity that exists in what you would call a hub, whether we call Austin a hub or not.”
I will be interested to watch how Delta continues to grow in Austin. Austin has limited European connectivity, with service to London, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt with British Airways, KLM, and Lufthansa, respectively. If there is continued European demand, this could be a perfect opportunity for Delta to establish themselves in the Transatlantic market from the city. San Antonio (which is a bigger city then Austin, actually) does not have any European flights whatsoever ever since Condor left, and given it’s proximity to Austin, San Antonians could utilize AUS for European travel, furthering the demand.
Sources
Simple Flying
FOX 7 Austin
Texas State Historical Society
Dallas - Fort Worth International Airport (Official Website)
Fly2Houston
AustinTexas (.gov)
The Points Guy
CNN
Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research
