Delta Air Lines cuts daily departures amid surge in travel demand

As travel demand takes off, Delta Air Lines announced plans to cut around 100 flights per day from it's schedule.

Delta Air Lines will reduce its flight schedule over the summer by axing around 100 flights per day to "minimize disruptions and bounce back faster when challenges occur."

On May 26, the airline released a statement that said "rebuilding Delta's full-scale operation" had been a challenge. This, combined with the rising demand for travel, prompted them to cut daily departures from July 1 to August 7.

This will mainly affect US and Latin American markets.

Chief customer experience officer Allison Ausband said several factors, many of which were a result of Covid-19, had made it impossible to operate according to their ideal standards.

"More than any time in our history, the various factors currently impacting our operation -- weather and air traffic control, vendor staffing, increased Covid case rates contributing to higher-than-planned unscheduled absences in some work groups -- are resulting in an operation that isn't consistently up to the standards Delta has set," she said in a statement.

Delta will join JetBlue and Alaska Airlines, which have also cut back their summer schedule for similar reasons.

JetBlue claimed it would cut up to 10 per cent of its schedule during summer due to "continued industry challenges". Alaska Airlines pulled theirs back about 2 per cent in June to meet "pilot capacity."

The majority of Alaska Airlines' nearly 3100 union pilots voted to go on strike last week.

The timing isn't great, as 3 million Americans are estimated to take a flight during the 5-day period around Memorial Day. This statistic from AAA is 25 per cent higher than 2021.

Last week Qantas announced similar plans to lower domestic flying schedules for July and August from 107 per cent of pre-Covid-19 levels to 103 per cent.