Delta to Open Haiti Link from Atlanta

US major Delta Air Lines is to introduce the first direct service to Haiti from Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta in more than two decades from this spring when it launches a weekly connection to Port au Prince. The flight, which remains subject to Government approval, will be operated by an Airbus A320 every Saturday from April 7, 2012. The details of the new route were released this week as the Caribbean nation prepares to mark the second anniversary of the January 12, 2010, earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people and crippled its infrastructure.

Delta Air Lines already offers flights to Port au Prince from New York John F Kennedy International, a route that has a strong point-to-point demand. This flight was launched on a daily basis in June 2009 and represented the airline’s first services to Haiti since the 1950s when it offered flights from New Orleans. The route was suspended in January 2010 following the earthquake that caused devastation across the country, but resumed in April 2010 initially on a three times weekly basis and increasing to five times weekly from June 2010.

Around 852,000 O&D passengers travelled between Port au Prince and the US last year, with American Airlines also offering connections Fort Lauderdale, New York and Miami; Continental Airlines to Newark; Spirit Airlines to Fort Lauderdale; Insel Air to Miami and Air France to Miami, as a regional connection to its long-haul flights from Paris.

Around 9,000 of these passengers began or ending their journeys in Atlanta and Delta Air Lines will use this established market as well as its wider domestic network at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport to stimulate traffic. According to consulate data, an estimated 50,000 people of Haitian descent are thought to inhabit the wider Georgia market with around 200,000 thought to live in the area spanning from Jacksonville, Fla., to Texas.