I thought things were bad in Cincinnati when I passed through on a Saturday afternoon back in September. And they were. But not as bad as they are going to be three months hence.
Delta had previously announced cuts of about 25 daily departures – about 10% of their operations at the former hub – scheduled for January 2010. Today they have announced further cuts, removing Montreal, Oklahoma City, Okla., Providence, R.I., Des Moines, Iowa and the Tri-Cities area of Tennessee as non-stop destinations and cut the total number of daily flights to 180-190, depending on the day with 70 destinations available non-stop.
OK, maybe calling is a “former hub” is a bit premature; certainly having 180 daily flights is significant. But the writing seems to be on the wall. The terminals are incredibly quiet most of the time with the total number of passengers traversing the halls significantly lower than when Delta really leveraged the facility as a hub. And I’m expecting that it will get worse there before it gets better. I have to wonder if they’re going to mothball a terminal there with all the cuts. It can’t make much sense to keep them open and operational when half the gates are never used.
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