With Southwest Airlines planning to fly to Boston Logan Airport in the fall, US Airways is trying to quash rumors that it plans on cutting flights by the end of the year.
In a question-and-answer section of a corporate newsletter, an anonymous employee asked about the rumor and that the carrier “has a tendency to pull out of a market whenever Southwest decides to enter or expand.” The employee cited Las Vegas and Pittsburgh as examples.
US Airways’ director of scheduling, Glenn Martin, replied that “at this point, there are no plans to reduce the flight schedule out of Boston.”
“It is sometimes true that when Southwest enters a market, the economics change and flights that were profitable for US (Airways) could become unprofitable,” continued Martin. “However, the opposite has also occurred, and there have been times when Southwest entered into markets that US (Airways) was serving and later pulled out completely, such as service to Hartford, Conn.”
US Airways, Logan’s third-largest airline last year, carried 15.3 percent of the passengers, offering 87 daily departures to 21 nonstop destinations. Massachusetts Port Authority spokesman Matthew Brelis thinks that Southwest’s arrival will cause competitors to lower airfares, but the Authority hasn’t discussed any possibility of competitors cutting flights.
US Airways’ Chief Doug Parker, at Reuters’ Travel and Leisure Summit in New York, said that “the carrier has little room to cut any more flights or seat capacity because its fleet has dropped to almost the minimum number of aircraft required by its pilots’ contract.”
