The airline is poised to become Austin’s second-largest in 2025.
Delta A321s in Austin (Photo: Shutterstock | lorenzatx)
Once dubbed as the Texas boomtown, Austin has lost some of its momentum in recent years, driven primarily by softening in the tech sector. But that hasn’t stopped Delta, which is positioning the Texas capital as a key gateway.
For over a decade, Austin held the No. 1 spot for the U.S.’s fastest-growing large metro area. However, the city slipped to second in 2022 and 2023, according to recent census data.
More people are moving out of the city, too, with a net loss of 2,500 individuals when comparing July 2022 and July 2023. This hasn’t happened for around two decades.
Austin Bergstrom International Airport became one of the fastest-growing U.S. airports, seeing a 63% rise in passenger numbers over the last decade. Recently, some airlines have reduced their schedules in the city.
American’s capacity reductions in Austin are the most substantial. But the airport has also lost high-profile airlines, including Virgin Atlantic this year, and Hawaiian Airlines in 2025.
With former commercial chief Vasu Raja leading the charge, American made a bad bet in Austin, dumping capacity into the city with several point-to-point routes. These quickly became some of the airline’s worst-performing routes, underpinned by the ousting of Raja earlier this year.
“We added these routes with our customers top of mind to bring them closer to the places they value the most when conducting business,” Raja said in a 2019 press release. “While it’s not our traditional hub and spoke routing, we understand the importance of travel for the tech community and look forward to offering these new flights to our loyal customers.”
Comparing 2019 and 2022, American added nearly 50% more seats in Austin, quickly becoming the airport’s second-biggest airline at the time. In just two years, this changed, and American cut scheduled capacity by 34% between 2022 and 2024, per Cirium Diio schedule data.
By May 2025, the airline is planning to operate only 42 peak daily departures from Austin, a far cry from the 76 it scheduled in 2022. With the exception of a few leisure routes to Mexico and Aspen, Colorado, American cut all of its point-to-point flights from Austin.
An American Airlines jet landing on runway 18R with the Austin skyline in the background. (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Mateen Kontoravdis)
The jury might still be out on why American fell flat in Austin. Indeed, its timing in the market wasn’t ideal, especially as the tech boom let up post-pandemic.
American’s largest hub – Dallas/Fort Worth – is also just 200 miles up Interstate 35.
But perhaps the biggest issue was that American never established a clear strategy in the Texas capital, instead taking more of a “spaghetti-on-the-wall” approach. The airline added plenty of routes to various spoke markets but didn’t establish a crew base or make any other investments in airport infrastructure.
Delta is singing a very different tune in Austin. As American has dropped routes, it has added more, some of which are the same. For instance, when American dropped Austin to New Orleans, Delta swooped in just days later to pick up the flying.
The carrier also seemingly pushed SkyWest into opening a crew base in Austin for the Embraer E175. SkyWest overwhelmingly operates Embraer aircraft on behalf of Delta from Austin.
In 2019, Delta opened a sleek new SkyClub in Austin that includes an outdoor patio. The 9,000-square-foot lounge is near the airport’s newer gates, which Delta primarily uses.
Views of Delta’s Austin operations from the lounge’s work stations in the quiet section of the Sky Club. (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Mateen Kontoravdis)
Finally, and perhaps most notably, Delta seems giddy over Bergstrom’s new midfield concourse. The 20-gate terminal is set to open in 2030, and Delta is already lining up for a substantial number of gates, according to some reports.
So, with a regional crew base and a meaningful investment in airport infrastructure, the airline is already laying the groundwork for an even larger presence in Austin.
The Sunbelt boomed post-pandemic and, with its Phoenix, Dallas/Fort Worth, and Charlotte, North Carolina, hubs, American capitalized on it. But Delta fell short in some of these markets, mostly because it lacks a South-Central hub.
That wasn’t always the case, though. Before Dallas/Fort Worth became American’s largest hub, Delta long maintained a large operation there. In 1991, the carrier maintained a 35% market share at the North Texas airport.
At the time, the airline was operating over 250 daily flights from Dallas/Fort Worth, including some long-haul markets. This quickly changed in 2004 when Delta gutted its operations at Dallas/Fort Worth to approximately 21 daily flights as part of a restructuring.
Delta’s Dallas/Fort Worth hub in September 2003 (Photo: Cirium Diio)
Since then, Delta has lacked a hub in Texas, instead focusing on its fortress in Atlanta. Having a South-Central hub, like American in Dallas/Fort Worth or United in Houston, allows for reduced stage lengths while feeding connections between the East and West coasts along with Latin America.
While Atlanta is undoubtedly massive, with nearly 1,000 daily Delta flights, it lacks the geographic positioning of Dallas/Fort Worth. Delta’s other Midwest hubs – Minneapolis and Detroit – are too far north to feed connections across the Sunbelt markets.
All in all, we shouldn’t be so quick to write off Delta’s posturing in Austin. With meaningful investment already and likely more on the way, the airline seems dead set on maintaining its status as the city’s No. 2 carrier.
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