Song to Cut 25% of Flights in September
Jun 16th, 2004 | By Jared BlankDelta’s low-fare Song unit will cut 25% of its 144 daily flights in September because, the airline says, that month is traditionally a slow period. The full menu of flights will return in October. Analysts aren’t buying that excuse, suggesting that carrier isn’t doing as well as Delta hoped. I imagine the answer is somewhere in between: certainly, if Song were doing extraordinarily well, they wouldn’t have cut the flights; if it were doing as miserably as the analysts suggest, the flights won’t return in October. Something to remember about Song: it was, for the most part, simply replacing Delta Express flights, or replacing Delta mainline flights that were flown mainly by leisure travelers. Even if Delta doesn’t grow these routes, they are taking some costs out of the system…and that’s, of course, a good thing (this is assuming that simply running Song isn’t adding cost to the system, or allowing Delta to lose focus on repairing the mainline. The latter is a very real fear.)