On the Rise
For years Sardinia sat one connection too far. You flew to Rome or Milan, waited out a layover, then boarded a smaller plane for the last hop across the Tyrrhenian. The island rewarded the effort, but the effort was real, and it kept a certain kind of traveller away.
That ended this summer. On 21 May 2026 a Delta Boeing 767 lifted out of New York JFK and, some nine hours later, set down at Olbia. It was the first nonstop service between Sardinia and the United States in the island's history. The route runs four times a week and is seasonal, holding through October before the winter closes it.
The way it came about is almost as good as the fact of it. Delta put the decision to a vote, its first Route Race, and let SkyMiles members and staff choose among three Mediterranean islands. The members picked Sardinia. Rather than disappoint anyone, the airline launched Malta too, but Sardinia was the one the public asked for by name.
Olbia is the quiet door to the Costa Smeralda, the stretch of northeast coast the Aga Khan conjured out of empty scrub in the early 1960s. Half an hour up the road is Porto Cervo, where the yachts moor bow to stern and the granite headlands fall into water so clear it looks shallow when it is not. The coves between, Liscia Ruja, Capriccioli, the pale sand of the Pevero, are the reason people cross oceans in the first place.
An island stops being remote the day you can reach it without changing planes.
What the flight really changes is the arithmetic of a short trip. A long weekend on the Costa Smeralda was never worth two changes of aircraft each way. It is worth one direct hop. The smart window is the shoulder, September into early October, when the sea holds its warmth and Porto Cervo has emptied of the August crowds. We would go then, before the route pauses for the season and the maths gets hard again.
A word of restraint. A single seasonal route does not make Olbia a hub, and the granite, the maquis and the long Gallura light did not wait on Delta to be worth the trouble. But convenience has a way of deciding things, and for the first time the trouble is optional.
