Delta flyers rejoice: Better (and more) Delta One seats are on their way … eventually. That's the main takeaway from an interview with Paul Baldoni, the new senior vice president of network planning for Delta, conducted by Zach Griff of The Points Guy earlier this week.
Baldoni revealed that Delta's latest and greatest Delta One Suites are coming to the Atlanta-based airline's fleet of Airbus A330-200s and A330-300s over the next few years. When it finally happens, it will be a much-needed upgrade from the outdated business class seats currently flying on some of its most popular routes.
In the newsy interview, Baldoni also revealed how close Austin (AUS) is to becoming a connecting hub city and revealed that some of the airline's new A321neos have lie-flat seats and are ready to go, pending government approval.
The biggest revelation, however, is that new Delta One Suites are coming to more of the airline's planes, helping make the up-front offering of the U.S.'s signature premium airline more reliable.
More Delta One Suites Are On the Way
The biggest news: Delta's older fleet of A330-200s and A330-300s are getting Delta's newest Delta One Suites installed “over the next few years,” Baldoni told TPG. Currently, those older A330s feature extremely outdated Delta One seats, so this retrofit will help Delta minimize the stark differences between its business class products.
Many travelers forking over thousands of dollars – or hundreds of thousands of SkyMiles – couldn't be sure if they were getting the fancy new suites or the prehistoric Delta One pod seats the airline is starting to become infamous for. Delta's 767s, however, won't be retrofitted, as the airline looks to slowly retire the older 767-300s from its fleet and has already retrofitted the 767-400s with a version of Delta One Suites, just without the door.
Finally, the airline is also going to put Delta One Suites in all of its A350s. Currently, the Atlanta carrier is using a 2-2-2, non-suite business class product on planes it took over from LATAM Airlines years ago. Those planes will get Suites, Delta Premium Select, and Delta Comfort seats, too.
Read Next: The Best and Worst Planes for Delta One Business Class
Delta One on the A321neo
Baldoni also revealed that the long-rumored narrow-body A321neos with lie-flat seats should be coming soon, and that several of them are sitting idle in the desert waiting for government approval right now.
Baldoni told The Points Guy that the seats aren't yet certified, but when they are, they'll be deployed to domestic routes that already have Delta One service, like New York (JFK) to Los Angeles (LAX) and San Francisco (SFO) and Boston (BOS) to LAX, too.
Additionally, Delta is adding more Premium Select seats to domestic routes on wide-body planes, too. Baldoni said that JFK-LAX flights with Premium Select performed well enough to add some of the seats between JFK and SFO, too, although he did not share timeline details.
More Growth in Austin
The final interesting nugget of information from Griff's interview with Baldoni was that its newest focus city, Austin, Texas (AUS), is growing to the point where Delta may soon add some connecting traffic there … even if they might stop short of calling it a “hub airport.”
“We're getting up to now close to 80 departures a day [along with our partners],” Baldoni told Griff. “When we get to close to around 120 daily departures, you start building some of that connectivity that exists in what you would would call a hub, whether we call Austin a hub or not.”
A new smaller, mini, southern hub for Delta would be very interesting for a growing region and an airport that just saw American Airlines get close to making it a hub, only to bow out of it late last year.
Bottom Line
Delta will add Delta One Suites to its outdated A330 aircraft over the next few years, according to a network planning executive in an interview this week. But that's not all the changes the airline is making to its lie-flat offerings. Delta One Suites will also be debuting on some old A350s and some narrow-body A321neos in the next few years, too.
Plus, with its rapid growth in Austin, Texas (AUS), Delta is looking making the Texas hotspot a sort of mini-hub. Although Delta stopped short of calling it that.
