Porrohman wrote
One of the problems with last year's service was the late departure time from EDI which resulted in very late arrival times for those using connections beyond ATL.
As a very frequent user (>100k airmiles) of the DL 97/96 to ATL the timing of the flight was one of its distinct benefits, especially when travelling for work.
Remember that it's very few people who travel for their work who actually get to travel Business class, so most of us have to slum it in cattle class. It's a long enough day when you have to fly to the US and frankly the last thing you want is to have to get up at or before the crack of dawn to check in for a flight that won't leave for another two or three hours after you have to show up for it. Couple that with the same inane bloody questions you get asked in the check-in queue, at the desk then again as you board the flight and it can be a disheartening experience before you even take off.
If you can check in at a reasonable hour, even if the check-in to take-off time and questioning is the same, the whole experience doesn't seem so bad. At the other end, the ATL experience is just so much better than anything you experience in the UK. Compared to ATL any of the London airports are seriously disorganised and appear very shabby. Of all the times that I've passed through ATL I have never taken more than 30 minutes to disembark, clear immigration, customs re-check my bags and then clear security again [my one bugbear - that you fly across the atlantic, but have to go through security again]. Once in ATL you've a great choice of connections (unsurprisingly) and there are frequent services to the majority of north & south american destinations.
Where the connection wasn't so good, was for the likes of US / Canadian west coast destinations like Seattle or Vancouver or if you wanted to head to Hawaii or further west (or effectively east). Some of these connections had a fairly long connection time or you were looking at an overnight stay. Then again, a lot of these destinations were probably better reached via an overcrowded inefficeint airport in the south eastern corner of the UK or via AMS.
Personally, I was extremely disappointed when DL withdrew the service and I'm having to rely on the CO service through EWR just now for work, which I'd hoped until recently would be a stop gap until DL brought in the 196/197 service to ATL for the summer. But sadly this is not to be, so we'll just have to keep using CO as BA weren't up to the mark when we tried them last month, a fourteen hour journey became a 36 hour marathon, so it's back to IAH via EWR on CO again this month.
Maybe the recent Tartan Week promotions might bring in more tourists, but the best thing that would make the routes work year round would be advertising & promotion this side of the Atlantic, especially when it's 2 USD to 1 GBP.
I don't see much from CO on the EDI route, but there's naff all on the JFK-EDI route from DL. There's supposed to be a flash advert on the Scotsman's website, but any time I've used the website, I haven't seen it which doesn't help. Hopefully there'll be more promotion for both routes as we could really do with proper competition to the US from Edinburgh.