Airlines including Dallas-based Southwest and Fort Worth-based American are cutting tens of thousands of spring flights from schedules because of serious headwinds from high fuel prices, staffing challenges and other ongoing supply chain constraints.
Southwest Airlines has recently cut 65,000 flights from its March through May schedule, according to flight schedule service Cirium, and the company on Tuesday cited “continuing challenges with available staffing.” American Airlines said Tuesday that it had cut flying for the remainder of the first quarter as well. But schedules show American has cut well into the second quarter too. Cirium’s data shows that American has cut about 71,000 flights between March and May during the last month.
Southwest, which made the announcement in a regulatory filing Tuesday, said that it now expects its flying schedule to be about 4% lower for 2022 than it was in 2019, even after stronger than anticipated bookings so far this year. For the second quarter alone, Southwest Airlines’ capacity will be about 7% lower than it was in 2019, even though travelers are eager to fly. Southwest, however, did say that revenue would be slightly better than previous estimates.
“The company’s current leisure revenue trends for spring break travel are strong and above 2019 levels,” Southwest said.
The cuts come even as airlines such as Chicago-based United see that “demand for travel has exceeded the Company’s previous expectations” but the repercussions of the economy’s quick bounceback puts pressure on inflation and labor that were hard to gauge a few months ago when schedules were made.
Southwest also said that business demand continues to suffer, particularly in January and February with the omicron variant of COVID-19 sweeping the country.
Competing airlines are cutting schedules for other reasons that are making it difficult for carriers to return to pre-pandemic levels of flying.
On Tuesday, United said it was cutting its…
