Delta Air Lines, poised to become the world's largest carrier by acquiring Northwest Airlines, plans to drop more flights to blunt soaring fuel bills.
"There will be some incremental cuts," President Ed Bastian told reporters Tuesday after Delta's shareholders meeting in New York. "It'll be targeted. We haven't decided yet" how many flights or where, he said.
The reductions will expand on domestic cutbacks of as much as 11 percent announced this year that include grounding 90 planes and eliminating the jobs of 3,000 employees who took buyouts.
U.S. carriers are responding to a 79 percent jump in the price of jet fuel in the past 12 months. Fuel has surpassed labor to become the largest expense at most airlines.
AMR Corp.'s American Airlines said May 21 that it will slash U.S. seating capacity by 12 percent, in part by retiring more than 100 planes and ending "thousands" of jobs. UAL Corp.'s United Airlines has said it will cut 1,100 jobs as it trims flying.
Airlines' efforts to cover fuel costs with fare increases and new fees have fallen short, leading an analyst to estimate that the U.S. industry's losses will top $7.2 billion this year.
Other airlines have dropped merger talks in part because of the unpredictability of fuel costs. UAL ended discussions with US Airways Group last week, and Continental Airlines said on April 27, after merger talks with UAL, that Continental would stay independent because the risks of a merger outweigh potential rewards.
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