Boston’s Aviation Party

There are few airports in North America that can look forward with as much optimism as Boston in the next few years. Two major base carriers publicly announcing significant plans for expansion, an influx of new international airlines, additional departure gates under construction and a vibrant supporting economy.

The last five years have seen Boston quietly growing with an average growth rate of some 4.8% compared to an average of 3.2% across the United States. Having broken through the 25 million departing seats per annum in 2018, Boston now ranks 15th in terms of size compared to 17th in 2015 having jumped ahead of both M&M’s, Miami and Minneapolis/St Paul. This year some 48 airlines will operate scheduled services to Boston compared to 39 in 2015 with new entrants such as Norwegian, Frontier, Hawaiian, Korean and Air Maroc all seeing opportunities. And with both JetBlue and Delta Air Lines publicly stating an intent to grow in the next couple of years what more can we expect?

Delta Have already announced a plan for an additional 60 daily departures by 2021 as the airline acquires additional gates as part of the airport’s development programme. Delta currently operate to some 58 scheduled destinations from Boston having added markets such as Philadelphia, Cleveland, Dublin, Lisbon and Edinburgh in the last two years. With Skyteam and alliance partners such as Korean Air, Virgin and the indestructible Alitalia operating further acceleration of a Skyteam hub facility is inevitable. Indeed, Virgin have already announced plans for a London Gatwick service in Summer 2020 although with Norwegian already operating that can of course be subject to change.

Lots of Delta Opportunities

For Delta, Boston represents a great strategic opportunity both for direct international services to Europe but also for perhaps some further Asian development. The current Seoul Incheon schedules of Delta and their partner Korean Air are very close to each other in both directions perhaps suggesting either a schedule change by one or perhaps a third frequency in the future. And with Delta announcing a significant move to Tokyo Haneda whilst Boston doesn’t currently feature in that plan over time it could be another highly valuable contributor.

From a domestic perspective for Delta the Airbus A220 provides a perfect match for a developing hub such as Boston, providing the right size capacity with 109 seats for both new market testing and additional frequencies to established hubs. A 220 opportunities could include additional daily frequencies to Orlando and Tampa (both currently three times daily), a third frequency on Cincinnati and perhaps a fifth daily Raleigh/Durham all within comfortable range for the aircraft. Further domestic expansion could be added to Seattle and Salt Lake City where the current three times daily services could perhaps support a fourth daily flight.

And then of course there is the new market opportunities that have already been warmed up by JetBlue.

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