Originally Posted by
wahooflyer
Link to Dallas Business Journal story (breaking as of 5 PM Eastern Friday 3/20/20):
https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/n...ellations.html
I'm surprised that domestic airlines in the US haven't reacted quicker to COVID-19 and the giant drop in travel demand. Southwest looks to be in a better cash position than some of their competitors, but this is the right move at this point IMHO. No details released yet, but I wonder if some routes will be axed completely for the rest of the spring?
Airline schedules are built for one month at a time through a very time consuming process of scheduling pilots, FA's, aircraft, and maintenance. Unfortunately, with so many moving parts, it is difficult to just simply cut 25% or more of an airline's flights. All of pieces have to fit in place. That said, WN has it a bit easier because they nnly have two different types of aircraft.
Suffice it to say, airliners are acting as quickly as possible to downsize. On the other side of this crises, it could take them a few weeks to get back to "normal" demand as well -- so we have that to look forward to.