Delta Air Lines starts New York-Abuja flights

Delta Air Lines has started two flights a week between New York in the United States and Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria.

Delta Air Lines, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the United States, and the biggest airline in the world, which started the New York-Abuja flight on June 11, 2009, said it would raise the service to 3 flights a week from July 1, 2009.

The Delta Air Lines flight is the only direct air service between Abuja and the United States.

The carrier said it would also start non-stop flight between Lagos and Atlanta.

The New York-Abuja route, via Dakar, the capital of Senegal, costs about $649 a passenger on the economy class and $2,738 for the business-class.

Delta Air Lines is operating the New York-Abuja service using a Boeing 757-200 ETOPS plane having 174 seats – 16 seats in the business-class and 158 seats in the economy-class.

Each flight will leave Abuja at 10.15 p.m. and land at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York at 6.45 a.m. In the return direction, the flight takes off from New York at 3.50 p.m. reaches Abuja at 10:30 a.m. the following day.

Delta Air Lines already flies between Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial centre, and the United States.

In a statement, Bobby Bryan, commercial manager of Delta Air Lines, said that the airline was “delighted in expanding its presence in the Nigerian market to serve two cities and further strengthen business and tourism between Nigeria and the United States.”

The new service, Bryan added, would offer passengers over 45 convenient connections to popular destinations like Washington DC, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston and Chicago.

In the statement, Bobby Bryan described Delta’s foray into Abuja “as a mark of the growing confidence of the international community in Nigeria’s aviation sector.”

As a part of its new flight between Abuja and New York, Delta Air Lines has announced a fare of $649, including tax, for the economy-class and $2,738 for the business-elite class, including tax, on its flights from Lagos to the United Kingdom.