At simply 356 miles, Delta begins flying its shortest wide-body route

Delta Air Lines has a brand new shortest wide-body route — and it is one that may shock you.

The airline is presently deploying a Boeing 767-300 between its mega-hub at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) and Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU), a roughly one-hour route that is solely 356 miles lengthy, as first seen in Cirium schedules.

The Boeing 767 will function on a roughly day by day foundation from now till April 9, 2023, as a part of a schedule extension that was simply filed over the weekend. You’ll wish to you should definitely examine the plane kind when reserving to see which aircraft is slated to function your flight.

Delta’s 767-300 is available in two cabin preparations. The latest configuration, which is internally dubbed the “76K,” incorporates a Delta One, Premium Select, Comfort+ and economic system cabin. Delta started a retrofit venture for 19 of its 767-300s (and a few Airbus A330s) in the course of the pandemic, and the reconfigurations are centered on including a premium economic system cabin to those fleets.

The 216-seat Boeing 767-300 that is flying to Raleigh-Durham options 26 Delta One pods in a 1-2-1 configuration, 18 Premium Select recliners in a 2-2-2 association, 21 extra-legroom Comfort+ seats and 151 commonplace economic system seats in a 2-3-2 configuration.

When the 76K variant operates on brief home flights, the Premium Select cabin is marketed as Comfort+, which signifies that Medallion elites and people splurging for extra-legroom seats can get pleasure from first-class-style recliners at no extra value. Just you should definitely choose a seat in rows 20 via 22 whereas reserving.

Twin-aisle jets usually fly on long-haul routes, however once in a while, airways will deploy them on brief home flights. That could be a nice alternative to strive a long-haul product with no need to sit down on a aircraft for hours at a time whereas crossing a number of time zones.

These planes function fancy lie-flat business-class cabins, a premium economic system part and typically even spacious economic system merchandise, too.

During the pandemic, airways suffered from diminished demand, particularly on worldwide routes, so it was fairly frequent to seek out widebodies working on hub-to-hub flights or routes to in style home locations, akin to Hawaii, Las Vegas and Orlando.

That mentioned, Raleigh-Durham undoubtedly does not “really feel” like a conventional home wide-body route. Perhaps the 767 has some downtime in Atlanta and as an alternative of parking the jet for just a few hours, the airline thinks it might probably fill the 216-seat aircraft on a brief home route. Or, maybe the airline is seeing numerous cargo demand or is doing a little pilot coaching particular to the 767 fleet.

Alternatively, it may simply be used as a repositioning flight for the 767 to get to Raleigh-Durham earlier than Delta’s transatlantic service to Paris.

Either method, it will be an awesome alternative to fly in consolation on such a brief flight. Plus, with loads of premium seats, scoring an improve on one among these flights must be simpler than on among the frequencies which can be operated by smaller home jets.

For Delta, the Atlanta to Raleigh-Durham route is now its shortest usually scheduled wide-body flight. The airline does plan three repositioning flights in January on its Airbus A330-300 from Boston to New York, however these aren’t common frequencies.

The following are Delta’s 10 shortest wide-body routes (with at the least 10 frequencies in a given month), primarily based on Cirium schedules: