Delta airlines has announced a new nonstop route from Hartsfield–Jackson International Airport to Cape Town International Airport.
The new route between Atlanta and Cape Town will be available by the beginning of 17 December, the airline said. It comes as part of the airline’s expansion from the largest airline hub in the world, located in Atlanta, into Africa.
“We will now provide ten times weekly service to South Africa through Cape Town and Johannesburg,” it said.
The Cape Town-Atlanta link is the second direct route announced in as many weeks, following the Cape Town-Washington link announced by United Airlines last week.
United Airlines said the new direct flights between Washington Dulles Airport and Cape Town make it the first airline to provide nonstop roundtrip service from the US’s political capital to South Africa.
The Washington-Cape Town flights commence on 17 November, with tickets already available for the route.
United will soon offer a total of 19 weekly flights to Africa – in addition to these new flights to Cape Town, the airline launched nonstop flights from New York/Newark to Johannesburg and Washington DC to Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria in 2021, said the airline.
The two American airlines have been engaged in a dispute over flight frequency to Cape Town since February this year.
According to BusinessInsider, both airlines applied for additional flights to Cape Town with the US department of transport. Both airlines had to argue their respective cases with the department as the existing bilateral agreement between the two countries limits the number of flights that can operate between the two countries.
The US Department of Transportation has subsequently allocated three weekly frequencies each.
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