Delta Air Lines suspending a few non-stop flights to Europe, Asia

Delta Air Lines announced that it will cut its system capacity by as much as 10% in 2009 as compared to 2008 because of dwindling revenues.

Earlier, Delta Air Lines, based in Atlanta, Georgia, the United States, and the biggest airline in the world, had said that it planned to reduce capacity by 6% to 8%.

Delta Air Lines said it was trimming down its weekly frequency on the Atlanta- Mexico City and Detroit-Mexico City routes as many passengers were cancelling their travel plans.

The carrier is reducing its international capacity by 15%, an increase from the 10% reduction that it had announced earlier.

Delta Air Lines will suspend, among others, non-stop flights from Atlanta (the United States) to Seoul (South Korea) and to Shanghai (China) as well as from Cincinnati (the United States) to Frankfurt (Germany) and to London’s Gatwick Airport.

In a memo to its 70,000 employees, Delta said that passenger revenues dropped by 20% in the first 4 months of 2009 as compared to the same period in 2008.

The airline blamed the rise in prices of aviation fuel as well as declining demand for air travel for the plunge in revenues.

Ed Bastian, president of Delta Air Lines, also said in the memo to the employees that the outbreak of the swine flu caused by the H1N1 virus also played a part in the loss in revenues. The carrier’s revenues, he added, would come down by $125 million to $150 million in the second quarter of 2009 on account of the adverse impact of the swine flu on air travel.
Ed Bastian told the employees that that the airline’s reductions in capacity would lead to further cuts in jobs.

He said the employees that the company “must reassess staffing needs” and that it was aiming at averting involuntary furloughs for the frontline staff.
Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines combined had cut about 8,000 jobs in 2008. (Delta Air Lines had merged with Northwest Airlines in 2008 to become the world’s biggest airline operator).

Airline capacity is measured in available seat miles, or one seat flown one mile. Carriers resort to cuts in capacity by doing away with routes, by reducing frequency or by scaling back on the size of the aircraft on a given route.