Airport Adds Two New Flights

There were a couple new additions to the slate of flights offered at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport in June.

Delta Airlines is adding new non-stop service between Milwaukee Mitchell and JFK International Airport in New York City, and Air Canada is resuming flights between Milwaukee and Toronto Pearson International Airport.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, air traffic plummeted to historic lows. While it hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels, it did begin climbing upward in 2021. The latest report on air and passenger traffic at the airport shows that as of May, passenger traffic has risen by 60% compared to passenger traffic at this point in 2021.

Airlines have been riding the resurging ridership over the past year, adding flights to and from Milwaukee Mitchell; and some airlines began offering flights at the airport for the first time ever.

The new non-stop service to JFK from Delta is in addition to nonstop flights between Milwaukee and New York City’s LaGuardia Airport the airline added in April.

“There’s been an increased demand for travel to this exciting city,” said Airport Director Brian Dranzik, “and we’re glad that Delta is responding by giving travelers more versatility and options by offering service to both JFK and LaGuardia.”

The new service to JFK will run seven days a week, with options for same day round trip travel, with flights leaving Milwaukee at 7:10 a.m. and leaving New York at 6:00 p.m.

Flights will be on the CRJ-700, manufactured by Bombardier. The planes offer nine first class seats and 16 Delta Comfort seats, which is what the airline calls its economy class seats, and 44 main cabin seats.

The daily, nonstop Air Canada flights returning to Milwaukee Mitchell were suspended at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. and Canadian governments agreed to close their borders to all non-essential travel for more than a year, beginning in March 2020.

Canada and the U.S. began easing border crossing restrictions during the later half of 2021. In March of this year, the country announced that fully vaccinated travelers can now travel to, and through, the country without showing a negative COVID-19 test.

The Air Canada flights will also run on a Bombardier plane, this one being the CRJ-200.

Dranzik said that many people are traveling this summer for the first time since the start of the pandemic, noting that the new flights offer a direct connection between Milwaukee and Canada’s largest city.