Cities try to hold on to Delta

By Kelly Yamanouchi

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Although Delta Air Lines is a fixture in Atlanta, that’s not so for some other cities. Several in the Southeast are losing Delta flights, and they’re lobbying the carrier to keep them.

Delta announced this fall that it is pulling out of Lynchburg, Va., as well as Florence and Hilton Head, S.C. The airline is discontinuing its routes to all those cities from Atlanta, with Hilton Head’s service already ended Nov. 1 and Florence and Lynchburg flights ending Monday. Delta also continues to shrink its operations in Cincinnati, where it once had a major hub.

A big reason for the cuts: Delta’s phase-out of certain aircraft, including smaller regional jets. Delta has been shifting away from 50-seat RJs in favor of versions with as many as 70 or 76 seats, which are more fuel-efficient.

As a result, flights to some smaller cities make less economic sense.

“Given that we have a limited fleet, we have to make these hard decisions sometimes,” Delta spokesman Trebor Banstetter said.

Cincinnati, a major base of operations for Delta subsidiary Comair, has seen its number of Delta flights drop from about 600 daily in 2005 to fewer than 200 this year. Comair will have its fleet of nearly 100 planes cut by half from 2010 to 2012.

In Lynchburg, Florence and Hilton Head, Delta’s departure leaves them with only one airline serving their airport: US Airways.

Lynchburg elected officials want Delta to rethink its move, putting that request in the form of a city council resolution in November.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., wrote to Delta Chief Executive Richard Anderson and called the Lynchburg flights “critical connection for airline passengers in Central Virginia.”

“The loss of Delta’s service will have a negative effect on the Lynchburg region’s vitality and its ability to retain and attract businesses,” Goodlatte wrote.

In Florence, Historic Florence Foundation board member Victor Nance Webster has led a campaign to gather signatures for a petition to keep Delta in the city. The online petition gathered about 125 supporters as of early December, which Webster touted as a positive for the “small regional city in a mainly rural community,” where “not everybody in this area actually goes and utilizes the Internet so much.”

Webster said the news of Delta’s pending withdrawal is bad timing for Florence because the airport has just broken ground on a new concourse.

“We’ve tried to be as resilient as possible and try to get them to change their minds,” Webster said. He added that “nothing that we’ve done has been antagonistic at all to Delta. I’ve been trying to convince Delta that our community supports them staying in Florence. People love traveling from Florence to Atlanta and then wherever their destination is.”

Especially perplexing to some in those cities is that the flights often were full. Even that doesn’t guarantee an airline will maintain service, however.

Although big airlines have improved their finances in the last year or so, on some routes they can’t get customers on board unless average fares are too low to cover operating costs.

As Delta cuts its fleet by about 90 planes this year and shifts away from smaller regional aircraft, “they’ve got to perform triage to the places they fly, because they just don’t have as many airplanes,” said aviation consultant Mike Boyd, who is working with Lynchburg to make an argument to Delta for continued service.

“The reality is there are more 50-seat jets in the fleet than there are markets they can make money with,” he said. “As fuel prices go up, that happens.”

Boyd said his firm’s forecasts show that 700 50-seat regional jets will be parked between now and 2015.

But for Lynchburg, “you can never trust an airline when they say no,” Boyd said. “They may be back again, so we want to stay friends.”

While Delta is aware of the community campaigns, Banstetter said that “what determines the future in any market is how successful it is, whether people take advantage of it and fly Delta.”

In South Carolina, Delta noted it will continue to fly to Savannah, which is within driving distance of Hilton Head Island. Meanwhile, Hilton Head is working on lengthening its runway after Delta cited that as a factor in its pullout.

“With tourism rebounding, we are cautiously optimistic that Delta will be returning to our market,” said Charlie Clark, spokeswoman at the Hilton Head Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau. “Travelers want options, now more than ever.”