American Airlines Will Halt more Flights to US Cities in the Absence of Covid-19 Relief

American Airlines will be forced to cut more flights to the US cities if the government absent the new coronavirus relief, said the airline CEO.

 

The CEO of American Airlines Doug Parker told CNBC on Thursday (Oct 8) that the airline would have to discontinue services to small cities and lessen flight operations to large cities in the absence of coronavirus relief. 

 

“There will absolutely be discontinuation of service to small communities, and there will be much less service to larger communities”, said CEO shortly after the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, rejected the stand-alone aid for airlines unless it was part of a broader stimulus package.

 

The US government earlier in March released its first stimulus package to prevent airlines from making layoff and required them to maintain minimum levels of service through September 30. As a result, American Airlines has cut services to 13 cities through the month of November. 

 

“It gave us the funds to keep people employed that … there wasn’t enough demand for airline service to keep them employed,” Parker said. “It allowed us to serve more markets than we would have otherwise.”

 

Travel industry, along with tourism, has been significantly impacted from the Covid-19 pandemic, even though it has already shown some gradua improvement, but it is too slow. 

 

American Airlines and United Airlines are planning to cut off a combined 32,000 jobs this month when the relief expires, however if Washington injected additional aid to the airline, the two carriers would retract the furlough.