June 10th - 14th, Worcester to West Palm Beach on Delta: Depart ORH at 5:51pm, Arrive West Palm Beach at 1:29am with 2 stops along the way (LaGuardia and Atlanta). Same dates but on JetBlue: Depart ORH at 6:28am, Arrive West Palm Beach at 2:27pm. 8 hours travel time.
Or, I can get a 6:30am flight out of Providence on Delta and get to West Palm Beach a little before noon and still have most of the day. I don't mind the extra time involved to get to/from Providence because it gets me into West Palm Beach at a better time. The JetBlue flight out of ORH is comparable but I'm not a big JetBlue fan (had issues with them in the past, lost bag, cancelled flights).
I almost exclusively fly on Delta nowadays. I have a Delta credit card so that gets me free checked bags and priority boarding plus I have TSA Pre-Check so my wait at security at the airport is never all that long. I really don't know what the logic is behind the ORH Delta flight being moved to later in the day.
Why it isn't being moved to earlier in the day is a real head scratcher. I still think an early day flight on Delta from ORH to Atlanta would be a huge success. That would get me to use ORH again.
Comments
The Atlanta times to make it work are great. Atlanta to Boston takes 2 hours and 43 minutes so let’s say it takes about 3 hours to get from Atlanta to Worcester. Flight leaves Atlanta at 900 arrives at Worcester at 1200, departs Worcester at 100 arrives back at Atlanta at 400. Although that doesn’t seem ideal, Atlanta has multiple flights to multiple destinations so I could hop on a connecting flight from Atlanta to Orlando and get there for 6:33 PM with a 55 minute connection window at Atlanta. It would have to be that time frame in order for it to be successful because you still need flights to be able to arrive in order to make that connection worth it. Anything earlier than 9am really wouldn’t work out unless Delta did what JetBlue does with JFK and have a mid day turn plus a morning flight there and an evening flight back to ORH. If you were to shift the times by 1-2 hours later, then you wouldn’t be able to get to Orlando till 830 or even later.
I personally love delta as well, I would love for there to be a flight to Atlanta to use it so I don’t have to travel out of Boston or a neighboring airport but when the schedule changes. It’ll be really hard to use Worcester airport
>> Wouldn't Atlanta to Orlando be direct?
"However, the only pro I see with the delta flight moving back to where it was, is you don’t have to get up at 5am to get to the airport to go to LGA then to ORH."
>> There will be 5am flights to ORH?
"unless Delta did what JetBlue does with JFK and have a mid day turn plus a morning flight there and an evening flight back to ORH."
>> YES YES YES! We need two daily flights to Atlanta and two daily flights back from Atlanta.
2nd, there never has been 5am flights to ORH. Waking up at 5am because for example, back in January I went from West Palm Beach to Worcester using Delta with the layover being LaGuardia, it was 7:15 AM takeoff with a 10:03 AM arrival to LGA then the flight left at 11:52 AM to get to ORH. The rule of thumb is get to the airport 2 hours early so get there for 5:15 but 5am you have to leave by so essentially before 5am (there was no other options or a little later flight).
3rd, 2 daily flights would be a great success to and from Atlanta with marketing and promoting as well as the right times the flights are at. But I would be surprised if they started with two flights. They probably would start with one flight and if demand is good for it, go for two. Remember, Delta doesn’t fly on Saturday’s still since when they cancelled it, demand for it was low. Flight loads average around 50% if I had to guess looking at seat charts for future flights, however I’ve also seen when vacations ends or begin the delta flight has loads of 80% or higher, sometimes even sold out.