Delta cutting five Las Vegas flights

Thursday, Dec. 28, 2000 | 11:23 a.m.

Delta Air Lines, the fourth-busiest airline at McCarran International Airport, will discontinue five of its 27 daily round-trip flights to Las Vegas because of a dispute with pilots.

A spokeswoman for Atlanta-based Delta said Wednesday that the company would discontinue flights by February, but schedules used by travel agents indicate that some of the five daily nonstop flights will end as early as Saturday.

"We have reduced some seat capacity effective in February, that is mainly late-night flying, those that would get in at around midnight, and this is due to pilot unavailability," said spokeswoman Kay Horner. "We felt like that would lessen the impact on customers."

Delta plans to cut direct flights to and from Boston, New Orleans, Tampa and Orlando, Fla., and New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

According to computer schedules, the last New Orleans flight will be Saturday, the last New York trip will run Tuesday, the final Tampa flight will occur Wednesday and the Boston and Orlando flights will be discontinued Jan. 30.

Delta, the nation's third-largest airline, has given no indication if the flights would be reinstated should the airline resolve its differences with its pilots union, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA).

UBS Warburg gaming industry analyst Robin Farley said the five canceled flights represent about 900 seats per day into the city, or about 20 percent of Delta's Las Vegas seat capacity.

The five destinations where Delta is discontinuing service are served with nonstop flights to Las Vegas by other carriers. Daily nonstops are offered to New Orleans by Southwest Airlines, Boston by America West Airlines and New York by America West and National Airlines.

Tampa and Orlando are served with daily flights by America West and Saturday-only flights by Southwest.

Delta will continue to offer one-stop and connecting service flights to the five cities being discontinued. The carrier will continue daily nonstop flights between Las Vegas and its major hub airports, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Portland, Ore.

Delta is the No. 4 airline at McCarran behind Southwest, America West and United Airlines, carrying 1.2 million passengers between January and October. In December, it has about 5,188 available seats coming into the market. It has had 6.2 percent of the commercial flights to McCarran and has a passenger market share of 8.2 percent.

The airline's dispute with the pilots union has been a problem for the company for months.

Earlier this month, Delta sued ALPA to try to force pilots to restore "status quo" on overtime requests. But U.S. District Judge Willis Hunt Jr. ruled that the airline had not provided enough evidence to prove that ALPA orchestrated the campaign against overtime.

But he also said his order does not absolve ALPA members from liability, since the court found evidence of violations.

Delta's 9,800 pilots have been in contract negotiations with the company since September 1999. Since then, the airline said there have been 110 formal sessions between Delta and ALPA. Last month, Delta and the union applied to the National Mediation Board for assistance from a mediator to resolve collective bargaining disputes.

But Delta sued over the overtime issue because it has had to cancel 100 to 125 flights a day from its 2,700-flight daily schedule.

The five Las Vegas trips Delta is discontinuing are all night flights -- the ones most susceptible to overtime cancellations. But like America West, Delta has attempted to build a "late-night" following at McCarran to capitalize on the city's reputation for around-the-clock activity.