Delta to cut Pasco-Minneapolis flight

By Pratik Joshi, Herald staff writer

Delta Air Lines is "suspending" its Pasco-Minneapolis flight beginning Sept. 1.

The nonstop service, which began in April, is being cut because of the continued economic downturn, said Delta spokeswoman Susan Elliott.

She said it's about matching capacity to demand, and the company will consider restoring the service if economic conditions improve.

Delta is adding a regular flight on the Pasco-Salt Lake City route to help passengers flying to Minneapolis and beyond, she said. That will bring the average number of daily flights to five, she said.

The flight cut is not a snub of the Pasco market, said aviation consultant Mark Sixel, who has worked with Tri-Cities Airport officials. Pasco provides good profit for Delta and there's a possibility of the flight being restored at some point, he said.

The Pasco-Minneapolis flight was started as part of plans by Northwest Airlines, which merged with Delta last October, and it's likely it didn't fit with Delta's plans, said Sixel, president of Sixel Consulting Group in Eugene, Ore.

The merged airline, one of the largest in the world, still is losing money, so it's restructuring routes wherever possible, Sixel said. He said Delta also cut a direct flight from Idaho Falls to Minneapolis that had been operating the last three years.

Passenger traffic on the Pasco-Minneapolis flight was substantial, but it didn't produce the profits the airline was hoping for. Sixel said a long-haul flight costs more than a short-haul run because of fuel and crew costs.

The flight was cut because Delta was looking for savings, and not because the Pasco market wasn't good enough, he said. Airlines lately have been reducing capacity to juggle supply and demand and remain profitable, Sixel said.

Traffic for Delta and Northwest operations decreased 2.5 percent in July, compared with July 2008, Sixel said. Meanwhile, the airlines had a 3.6 percent decrease in capacity while their load factor, which is the percentage of occupied seats, increased 1 percent to 87.7 percent for the same period.

It makes sense for Delta to route flights from Pasco and other smaller West Coast communities through its Salt Lake City hub, Sixel said.

Losing the direct flight to Minneapolis means anyone traveling to the East Coast will be inconvenienced, said Deanna Smith, spokeswoman for the Tri-City Development Council, which has lobbied for years to get more nonstop flights from Pasco.

TRIDEC will continue to work with the airline industry to provide better travel options in the Tri-Cities market, Smith said, suggesting maybe Delta needed to look at its pricing structure instead of eliminating the service.

Delta and Northwest still are sorting out route issues since their merger, and that makes it difficult to predict the future of the nonstop flight to Minneapolis from Pasco, said Jim Morasch, Tri-Cities Airport director.

Most passengers using the nonstop service had a destination other than Minneapolis, and each time they changed planes during their travel, the airlines' "segment costs" went up, making the route less lucrative, he said.

But Morasch said over the years he's seen many discontinued flight routes restored.

-- Pratik Joshi: 582-1541; pjoshi@tricityherald.com; Business Beat blog at www.tri cityherald.com

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Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009

Delta to cut Pasco-Minneapolis flight

By Pratik Joshi, Herald staff writer