American Airlines cut its flights to New York City by an unprecedented 90 percent on Monday, the latest airline company to dramatically reduce service to the dense metropolis, which has descended into a hotspot for Covid-19.
As the number of virus cases in the state and its adjacent neighbors continue to rise, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Guidelines for travel to the region, "flight demand to New York is rapidly dropping," David Seymour, Senior Vice President of Operations of United Airlines, wrote to staff in a memo.
American Airlines will only fly 13 regular flights to LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark airports until May 6, compared to 271 a year earlier. Spirit Airlines, JetBlue and other airlines have already discontinued service since New York City's coronavirus situation worsened.
An American Airlines flight leaving La Guardia Airport in New York on Sunday was carrying only 27 passengers on a 737-800 which had a seat capacity of 172, a spokesman for the airline said. This was yesterday's busiest flight the airline based in Fort Worth had at New York.
Workers at the three major NYC-area airports will only be operating from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and they will work with capacity restrictions in place to preserve on-board social distance on each aircraft, American Airlines said.
These flights will be manned by personnel from bases outside New York and will allow less of AL's New York colleagues on the ground to support customers and crewmembers during this time of suspension, the company said.
The changes came only one day after the chief executive officer of United Airlines sent a letter to workers confirming the indefinite suspension of approximately 90 percent of all Newark and LaGuardia flights in and out.
The restricted New York operations will help to provide the airlines' clients with vital access, including transportation of any necessary staff and supplies that the community and medical professionals fighting the disease require, Seymour pointed out.
"The reduced number of flights would have capacity cuts in place to keep social distancing aboard each plane," he said.
New York-area airports are usually among the busiest in the country and the city has some of the most overcrowded airspace, but coronavirus has caused many airlines to deeply cut service, rendering the region more isolated.
In some cases the cuts in the tri-state area are greater than other carriers do in their networks because of the epidemic, as demand for air travel craters.
American Airlines rallied 1.2 percent to settle at $9.50, after tip-toeing between a 5.8 percent intraday gain and a 3.0 percent loss. The rebound comes after the stock had closed on Friday at a record low of $9.39. For the meantime the U.S. Global Jets exchange-traded fund fell 4.2 percent Friday and S&P 500 index rose 7.1 percent.
