If your end-of-summer plans include a trip to see museums in Manhattan or visit the Washington Monument in D.C., plan your flight carefully. It appears that Delta Air Lines has reduced its August flight schedule for airports in New York City and Washington, D.C., along with many other cities, according to data compiled by Simple Flying.
The aviation news outlet collected information from flight scheduling website Cirium, which revealed that flights between New York's LaGuardia Airport (LGA) and Washington DC's Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA) “are the most affected, with a decrease of about 37 percent.”
Some major airlines, like Southwest, have been adjusting their flight schedules based on disruptions, such as pilot shortages and undelivered aircrafts, as relayed by the airline's CEO Bob Jordan, during its first-quarter earnings call. However, Delta told Best Life that the airline now has "1,000 more pilots today than we did in 2019." Also affecting flight schedules are more restrictive takeoff and landing measures and a shortage of air traffic controllers as announced by the Federal Aviation Administration. Those are just a few of the reasons why air travel will be challenging this summer.
“We don’t want to pull down flights. I’m sure no airline wants to pull down flights,” JetBlue's CEO Robin Hayes stated to CNBCback in March. “But if we don’t cut them the system is not going to be workable this summer.”
Simple Flying additionally discovered that Delta flights between LGA and Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) will also be affected, “with 77 flights cut in each direction” in August. Hartford (BDL), Atlanta (ATL), Bangor (BGR), Denver (DEN), Charleston (CHS), Tampa (TPA), Detroit (DTW), Minneapolis (MSP), Miami (MIA), West Palm Beach (PBI), Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) will also have fewer departures from LGA, though the exact number was not provided.
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It also appears that Delta is reducing routes in August to several West Coast cities, including San Francisco (SFO), Los Angeles (LAX), San Diego (SAN), Portland - Oregon (PDX), and Seattle (SEA). And it is also shedding routes to the Northeast (Boston (BOS), Portland (PWM)) and the South (Charleston (CHS), Charlotte (CLT)), as well as Washington Dulles (IAD), Norfolk (ORF), Minneapolis-Saint Paul (MSP), Syracuse (SYR), and Santo Domingo (SDQ).
While the news of fewer flights from two of New York City’s largest airports might disappoint some seasonal travelers, Simple Flying did find that Delta appears to be adding new flights to other cities in August, as well. The airline is adding more flights to Washington Dulles (IWD), Salt Lake City (SLC), and Newark (EWR) in August.
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“Salt Lake City will connect to Newark twice daily in August… doubling what the airline flew last year,” Simple Flying reports. “Flights from Seattle to Washington [D.C.] will also increase to twice daily.”
The website adds that four direct flights have been added between LGA and SLC. This information was confirmed on the Delta website, which showed that four flights take place each Saturday in August (connecting flights to the two cities are also available other days in August). According to Simple Flying’s research, this is the “first time in ten years” that the two cities will begin flying direct via Delta.
A corporate communications representative from Delta Air Lines told Best Life: “Delta has reduced our originally planned summer schedule beginning in June to improve overall reliability in our operations. These adjustments were made in domestic markets where our customers have plenty of options available so they can be easily re-accommodated. This decision reinforces our unwavering commitment to provide the best possible travel experience for our customers.”
