New Route of the Day – Americas (27 May 2022): Delta Air Lines between Boston and Athens

Delta Air Lines now connects Boston and Athens, the first airline to do so in over 20 years. The SkyTeam carrier began service on 27 May with a 3-weekly service on the 7,650-kilometre route. Olympic Airways last flew between these two airports in 1994. Delta’s flights depart the US east coast airport on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays at 20:05 local time arriving in Athens at 00:25 local time the following morning. Flights from the Greek capital back to Boston take place on the same days (departing Athens at 14:15 local time and reaching Boston at 17:50 local time) as the airline operates New York JFK-Athens-Boston-Athens-New York JFK. The airline’s 282-seat A330-300s will be used on the route.

Delta’s third route to Athens

Delta already serves Athens from Atlanta (daily in summer, resumed after a gap of several years on 2 July 2021) and New York JFK (up to 11-weekly during the summer). Only the New York service will operate in winter, with frequency reduced to 5-weekly. In addition to these Delta flights, American offers daily service to Athens this summer from Chicago ORD, New York JFK (launched 3 June 2020) and Philadelphia. United flies daily from New York EWR and Washington IAD (launched 1 July 2021), while Emirates flies between Athens and Newark.

As a result, this summer, Athens should welcome 63 weekly flights from the US, up 37% compared with August 2019, when it had 46. Seat capacity is up 31% to 17,800 weekly one-way seats, of which Delta has 5,900, American has 5,500, United has 3,900 and Emirates has 2,500.

For Boston, the addition of Athens service means that the Massachusetts airport will serve 20 European destinations non-stop this summer, with 240 weekly flights. That is the same number of destinations as in August 2019, with Athens replacing Manchester (which was served 3-weekly by Virgin Atlantic). Heathrow (with 42 weekly flights) and Reykjavik KEF (with 26) have the most weekly flights.