For a long time, flying to Europe in winter meant dealing with a shrinking list of options. Airlines would wind down their summer routes once the busy season ended and that was pretty much that until spring. Delta is changing that this year, and if you’ve been wanting to visit Europe without the summer madness, the timing couldn’t be better.
Delta has decided to keep flying to three European destinations all the way through winter and into January 2027 — Catania in Sicily, Rome, and Porto in Portugal — instead of doing what most airlines do and pulling the plug once summer ends. And they aren’t exactly random choices. They’re places people genuinely want to visit, and apparently enough of them want to go in winter to make it worth Delta’s while.
The most exciting piece of this is the nonstop flight between JFK and Catania. It launched just last year and it’s still the only direct connection between New York and Sicily — a fact that clearly resonated with travelers, because the route performed well beyond what Delta expected. Rather than pulling it after summer, they’re keeping the daily Boeing 767-300ER service going all the way through January. This is genuinely a good news for anyone who have a family in Sicily or anyone who has ever wanted to see Mount Etna in the snow.
If Minneapolis-St. Paul is your home airport. Delta just made your travel options a whole lot better. The Rome route came back last year after a nine-year gap, and now it’s staying through winter too. Three flights a week instead of daily, and they’re using an Airbus A330-200 rather than the bigger summer plane, but none of that really matters when you consider what you’re actually getting — a nonstop flight from the Midwest to Rome. That’s not something you can say about many cities in this part of the country.
Honestly, Rome in winter is something most people never even consider, and that’s exactly why you should. Summer in Rome sounds romantic until you’re standing in a two-hour line, drenched in sweat with five hundred other tourists who all had the same idea. The JFK to Porto route hasn’t even made its first flight yet, but Delta has already committed to keeping it running through winter. Bookings came in so strongly that executives didn’t feel the need to wait and see how things played out — they just went ahead and extended it. Three times a week on a Boeing 767, and suddenly, Porto becomes one of the rare Portuguese destinations you can actually fly to year-round without hunting down a connection. For a city that most airlines treat as a summer-only option, that’s a pretty big deal. Most people never explore the real Rome.
The aircraft choices here are worth noting. By using mid-sized wide-body planes like the 767 and A330-200, Delta is threading a needle — planes big enough to offer real premium comforts like lie-flat business class seats, but not so large that filling them in the off-season becomes a financial problem.
Most passengers figured out that Europe in winter is actually wonderful. There are smaller crowds, more ventilated rooms, and high chances to actually enjoy these places without the crowd worries. Delta is working on that shift, and based on the booking numbers, it looks like they’re on the right path.