Delta Air Lines has cut total capacity by 70 percent "until demand starts to recover," CEO Ed Bastian said in a letter to employees on Wednesday.
The cuts include an 80 percent reduction in international service over the next two or three months. Recent cuts include complete suspension of flights to Paris after Friday and suspension of service to Johannesburg and Accra, Ghana, after this weekend. Delta also is suspending service between Atlanta and Santiago until April 1, suspending service to El Salvador until April 3 and reducing service to Bermuda, Grand Cayman and Costa Rica.
Delta also is parking half of its active fleet—more than 600 aircraft—accelerating aircraft retirements, enacting executive pay cuts and closing most of its lounges.
Delta's March revenue will decline $2 billion year over year, and the drop will be worse in April, Bastian said.
"Cash preservation remains our top financial priority right now," he wrote. "Making swift decisions now to reduce the losses and preserve cash will provide us the resources to rebound from the other side of this crisis and protect Delta's future."
Southwest Airlines, meanwhile, plans to cut capacity by 20 percent between April 14 and June 5, on top of its current cuts related to the Boeing 737 Max grounding, according to EVP and chief commercial officer Andrew Watterson. Most cuts will be in markets where Southwest has four or more nonstop flights, he said.
With a mostly domestic network, Southwest has not had to make the deep cuts that its competitors have made. However, the carrier has seen several days in a row in which cancellations have outpaced bookings, and its load factor has dropped to 50 percent in recent days, according to Watterson.