REVENUE STRATEGY – DELTA AIR LINES

If domestic competition is too fierce for safe margins, seek revenue abroad. Even lower grade revenue?

1. Delta Air Lines hopes to boost revenues by serving a bevy of second-tier international destinations like Accra, Düsseldorf, Vienna, and Mumbai where lower-cost fiercely competitive rivals in the domestic network such as AirTran Airways, JetBlue, Southwest, and even US Airways don't fly.
2. Delta lagged far behind most legacy rivals such as American Airlines, Continental Airlines, and Northwest Airlines when it came to overseas markets.
3. It hired Glen Hauenstein from Alitalia, the Italian state-owned carrier. He has done a masterful job of designing routes that feed traffic into Delta's international flights.
4. It shifted focus to second-tier markets such as Nice and Venice, and emerging markets like Kiev, the capital of Ukraine even though its 214-seat Boeing 767s, which guzzle more fuel and give Delta more capacity than it needs in some of these fledgling markets.
5. In coming months, the carrier will launch direct service to new markets including Seoul and Dubai, and hopes to gain three to six slots at London's Heathrow Airport when the new pact liberalizing flights between the U.S. and Europe begins in March, 2008.

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]