Up To 17 Hours: Delta Air Lines' 10 Longest Flights This Coming Winter

The northern aviation winter season is nearly here. Based on IATA slots, northern carriers, including Delta Air Lines, will switch to winter schedules on October 26. They’ll maintain them until March 28. According to Cirium Diio data, Delta will have the world’s fifth-highest number of long-haul services in this period. Only Emirates, United Airlines, Qatar Airways, and British Airways will have more.

Given Delta’s vast size, just one in 25 of its flights will be long-haul. This is despite its winter long-haul services rising by 3% year-over-year to their highest level yet. They’re up by over a fifth compared to before the pandemic in winter 2019/2020. But what about the SkyTeam member’s longest nonstop operations?

Delta’s 10 Longest Flights In The Upcoming Winter

Credit: Flickr

Notice Los Angeles to Melbourne, which is blocked at up to 16h 05m. This is what’s in booking engines, schedules, etc. It’s chocks-off-to-chocks-on, and includes taxi time at both airports, the actual flight, and a period for short delays.

Starting on December 3, the long route will launch during the peak summer Down Under and in time for Christmas. It is the only route of Delta’s ten longest that it has not previously flown. It will face Qantas and United Airlines. It will be the first time since Virgin Australia pulled out in 2020 that the long market has had a trio of carriers.

Then there’s Los Angeles to Shanghai Pudong, which is the world’s seventh-busiest airport by aircraft movements. Delta returned to the airport pair on June 1, 2025, having last flown the route to the enormous Chinese city in 2020. It faces China Eastern and United.

All 10 Routes Will Use The A350-900

Credit: Delta

According to ch-aviation, Delta now has 38 A350-900s. They are in three very different configs, each with a different number of seats. One version has 275 seats, another has 306, and—although not mentioned in the table—another has 339.

The 339-seat layout is on ex-LATAM frames. Just two aircraft still have this capacity, with the final departure down for the last day of the northern summer season, on October 25. Like the other aircraft that have already gone through the process, they’ll be reconfigured into higher-premium machines.

Nearly all the ten longest links are on 275-seat aircraft. The low-capacity, high-premium version is, of course, lighter and burns less fuel than the others, which helps to increase range. And with a MTOW of 283 tons (it is unclear if all frames have that), they are more powerful, helping to overcome payload problems from hot-and-high Johannesburg in particular. More Delta One seats help to overcome the overall lower capacity.

Of Course, Delta Has Had Multiple Other Very Long Flights…

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They include Atlanta to Mumbai, which was Delta’s longest nonstop flight to date, and was served in 2008 and 2009 aboard its Boeing 777-200LRs. Between 2010 and 2012, it operated from Detroit to Hong Kong. This was the first time nonstop flights existed to the Pearl of the Orient from its ex-Northwest Michigan hub. However, Northwest used the 747-400 via Tokyo Narita until 2009.

Between 2006 and 2009, Delta flew the 777 from New York JFK to Mumbai, and then again from 2019 until the pandemic meant it stopped in 2020, which was when its Triple 7 subfleet was retired. Delta is widely expected to return to India once its A350-1000s start to arrive.

Atlanta to Dubai operated between 2007 and 2016, with all flights also on the 777. Emirates does not serve this route. However, Etihad Airways runs from Abu Dhabi to Atlanta, while Qatar Airways does so from Doha.