Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and United Airlines are reducing seats on some routes to London, Tokyo and other overseas business centers by as much as a third in response to plunging international-travel demand.
American chopped seating capacity between Chicago and London's Heathrow Airport by 33 percent, while United cut 25 percent, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of data from schedule-planning service apgDat. Delta dropped a route between Mumbai, India, and New York's Kennedy airport, and United pared Tokyo-Chicago flying by a third.
The analysis shows how dwindling traffic is forcing the biggest U.S. carriers to unwind some of this decade's global growth. Because discount competitors don't fly to Europe and Asia, such flights typically have been more profitable than domestic service.
"International has gone from the bread-and-butter to the weakest part of the business," said Michael Derchin, an analyst at FTN Midwest Research Securities in New York. "They're cutting to keep fares from completely collapsing. It would hurt more to fly big empty airplanes over the ocean."
Delta, American and United, the largest U.S. airlines, have announced reductions of 3 percent to 6 percent of international seats in 2009.
Investors may hear about more pullbacks tomorrow at a J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. aviation conference in New York as travel shrivels further with U.S. joblessness at a 25-year high.
BLOOMBERG NEWS
