Friday, July 27, 2012

Delta Air Lines announces shut down of Comair

Delta Air Lines (DL) said Friday it will shut down regional subsidiary Comair after Sept. 29. Cincinnati-based Comair, which is DL’s only wholly owned regional subsidiary following the sales of Mesaba and Compass Airlines in 2010, had already undergone a major downsizing.

According to Comair’s website, the airline still serves about 60 Canadian and US cities with around 290 daily flights operated under the Delta Connection brand. Formed in 1977, the airline carried 5.6 million passengers in 2011.

DL senior VP-Delta Connection Don Bornhorst said in a statement, “While regional flying has and will remain a key component of Delta’s network, customer expectations and the unit costs of regional flying have evolved. In response, Delta recently announced its plans to reduce the total number of regional jets in its network while adding more mainline flying. This includes reducing the number of 50-seat regional jets from nearly 350 aircraft to 125 or fewer in the upcoming years. As a result of this reduction and changes to its customer-focused business strategy, Delta has made the difficult decision to cease Comair’s operations.”

DL added that shutting down Comair “will not result in any significant changes to Delta’s network, which has enough flexibility to accommodate these changes. Currently, Comair accounts for approximately 1% of Delta’s network capacity. There will be no disruption to customers and no significant adjustments to Delta’s flight schedule or locations served.”

DL said it still plans to serve 49 destinations directly from Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky (CVG). Comair president Ryan Gumm told the carrier’s 1,700 employees in a Friday memo that its unit costs were simply deemed too high to continue.

(Aaron Karp - ATWOnline News)

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