Two Trends Reshape European Travel For American, Delta And United

Transatlantic leisure travel has long been a segment served primarily by widebody aircraft and flown primarily in the summer by the mildly adventurous. This month, both patterns have faced emerging challenges.

First, while Delta President Glen Hauenstein has been saying since the pandemic ended that the trans-Atlantic travel season has stretched out beyond summer, United has now bought so fully into the concept that Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella said that United would reschedule more Europe flying for the fourth quarter starting in 2026.

On the United Oct. 16 earnings call, Nocella said “On the Atlantic, there’s a Tel Aviv story, which is different than the rest. But Atlantic, again, we’ve learned a lot about Q3 seasonality and where capacity should be placed, and we are going to be a lot more prudent with July and August in particular next year and push capacity out into the other quarters.”

Two years ago, on Delta’s October 2023 earnings call, Hauenstein talked about the shift of transatlantic travel to fall. “What we’re really excited about is the lengthening of the European travel season,” he said. “That has really gone from primarily ending in the summer.”

The season continues “through November, through the holidays, through the New Year,” Hauenstein said then. “And really now we’re only talking about a six-to-eight-week period that are the doldrums for Europe,” as the slow season for transatlantic shrinks.

The extension of the transatlantic season appears to have a demographic component, composed of baby boomers no longer tied to work or children’s school schedules.

On Delta’s April 2025 call, Hauenstein specified that baby boomers – the generation born between 1946 and 1964 – were flocking to Europe as part of the “revenge travel” phenomenon, compensating for the inability to travel in the pandemic years.

“There’s only so much time to go to Europe,” Hauenstein mused. “The cohort that is traveling right now has an average age in Delta One in the 60s, which means the baby boomers are traveling,” he said.

“And being a baby boomer, I can say this without fear of retribution, there is only so much time to go to Europe or so much time to go see Australia or Japan, and so you’ve got this wealth effect where this cohort of retirees is wealthier than any other cohort even with the most recent rundown and they want to go do things,” he said.

As for the trend to fly narrow bodies on the transatlantic, it seemed to accelerate this month. Most notably, American announced on Oct. 10 that next year it will introduce the Airbus A321XLR — an ultra-long-range version of the A321neo — into trans-Atlantic service. “The A321XLR has a range of up to 4,700 nautical miles, opening up a world of new opportunities for American and its network,” the carrier said in a press release.

A day earlier, United said that next summer, it will serve two transatlantic destinations – Glasgow, Scotland and Santiago de Compostela, Spain – with Boeing 737 MAX aircraft.

The recent use of narrowbodies on the transatlantic began in July 2017 when Norwegian Air International flew a 737 MAX 8 between Edinburgh, Scotland, and Bradley International Airport in Hartford. As for Airbus, In August 2021 JetBlue first flew an Airbus A321ILR on the Kennedy-Heathrow route.

Historically, Continental began flying the narrowbody Boeing 757 on transatlantic routes in the 1990s. Continental’s April 2001 flight schedule shows 757 flights from Newark to Lisbon and Amsterdam. In 2024, Newark-Oslo launched. After a 2010 merger, United took over the Newark hub and continued to fly the 757 internationally.

Who oversaw the expansion of Continental’s Newark hub? The answer is Hauenstein.

The 1982 Stetson University graduate joined Continental in 1987 as international controller. He rose to senior vice president network, responsible for planning and execution of the airline’s schedule, fleet, pricing and revenue management strategies. Hauenstein went to Alitalia in 2003, then was hired by Delta CEO Jerry Grinstein in 2005, when Delta was in bankruptcy. He vastly expanded Delta’s international reach.

It is safe to say that Hauenstein is the primary architect of the global U.S. carriers’ transatlantic expansion over the past 30 years. Notably, he no longer sees narrowbody service as the preferred option, at least for Delta, which has staked out a spot as the premier U.S. airline.

On Delta’s third quarter earnings call on Oct. 9 (the day before American’s announcement), Hauenstein turned down his nose at transatlantic narrow body flying. “We’ve chosen not to fly narrow-bodies in the transatlantic because of product and brand issues,” Hauenstein said, on the Delta earnings call. “So we’re not going to go in that direction.”