American Airlines is cancelling a number of routes - including its New York JFK to London Stansted service ” and Qantas is doing the same as carriers continue to struggle against rising fuel costs.
The former”s Stansted service only launched last October, but will discontinue service effective 2 July. Passengers with tickets will be contacted starting next week and re-accommodated on alternative flights.
Other American routes to go are: Chicago-Buenos Aires, from 3 September; Chicago-Honolulu, reduced service from September and dropped from 5 January 2009; Boston-San Diego, from 3 September.
American and its subsidiary American Eagle flights from San Juan to the US and various Caribbean islands will also be affected from a change of operations at San Juan, Puerto Rico.
More scheduled reductions will be announced in the next few weeks to achieve the carrier”s targeted 11%-12% capacity cut ”in the face of skyrocketing fuel prices and a softening economy” it said in a statement.
Qantas Group is grounding two Boeing 767 and an Airbus A320, cancelling the delivery of another A321, retiring a B737 and accelerating retirement of four B747s as part of its contingency plans to come through the tough economic climate.
”This will enable us to make significant changes to domestic and international flying for both Qantas and [domestic subsidiary] Jetstar,” said Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon. ”In some cases this will involve pulling off routes entirely, in other cases we will scale back frequencies and capacity.”
It will drop Qantas” Gold Coast-Sydney and Ayers Rock-Melbourne routes from August, as well as Jetstar Sydney-Whitsunday Coast, Adelaide-Sunshine Coast and Brisbane-Hobart services from July. Reductions on Adelaide, Avalon and Cairns routes (Jetstar) will start in August.
Details of international network restructuring will be announced within a week.
”Qantas remains a fundamentally strong company, with a good balance sheet and a commitment to investment that includes a $35bn order for aircraft,” added Dixon.
”We must make these hard decisions now, however, if we are to ensure the ongoing strength of Qantas”and position ourselves for growth when the trading environment improves.”
There will be staff cuts too, he said ” at first on a voluntary basis ” and pay for the company”s senior executive group will be frozen, and the normal July pay review for the remaining 1,000 executives deferred.