Delta adds 'point-to-point' route from Las Vegas to San Jose, Calif.

Ben Mutzabaugh | USA TODAY

Delta Air Lines is adding a new nonstop route between Las Vegas and San Jose, Calif., that will go head-to-head against existing service offered by Southwest. Delta also will add seasonal Saturday-only service between Minneapolis/St, Paul and Savannah, Ga., the airline confirmed to Today in the Sky.

The Airline Route blog appears to have been the first to report the new routes, which had not been officially announced by Delta.

Delta’s Las Vegas-San Jose route will launch Dec. 30, with Delta Connection affiliate Compass Airlines operating three daily round-trip flights on 76-seat Embraer E175 jets.

The route is noteworthy because it’s a “point-to-point” route that does not touch any of Delta’s hubs. That’s a rarity for Delta. The carrier uses a “hub-and-spoke” business model under which nearly every one of its flights is to or from one of its hubs.

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American and United are the USA’s two other big carriers to use the hub-and-spoke model, which allows the carriers to fly passengers between nearly any two cities in their network via a flight connection at a hub airport.

Only a small percentage of Delta's flights are non-hub routes. Baltimore-Raleigh is one example. And Delta flies a number of seasonal once-a-week routes during the winter between Cancun and destinations like Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Washington Dulles and Hartford, Conn.

Delta's San Jose-Las Vegas flights will compete head-to-head against Southwest Airlines, which operates nine daily round-trip flights on the route using Boeing 737 aircraft. And there's even more competition to Las Vegas from the two other nearby "Bay Area" airports of San Francisco (SFO) and Oakland (OAK).

Five different airlines -- United, Southwest, Virgin America, JetBlue and Frontier -- currently fly nonstop between SFO and Las Vegas. From OAK, both Southwest and Spirit fly nonstop to Las Vegas.

Elsewhere, Delta plans to begin seasonal service to Savannah from its hub at Minneapolis/St. Paul. Starting March 5, Delta Connection affiliate Endeavor Air will fly one round-trip flight each Saturday through May 28 on 76-seat Bombardier CRJ-900 regional jets.

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