United Airlines and JetBlue each have deepened their service cuts amid plummeting demand.
Late Tuesday, United said it was reducing its April schedule by 60 percent, including an 85 percent decrease in international flights and a 42 percent cut in flights across the United States and Canada. International flights in April will be limited to 45 per day, largely to the Caribbean and Latin America, with a handful of long-haul routes. Those include daily service from Newark to Brussels, Frankfurt, London Heathrow, Mumbai, New Delhi and Tel Aviv, daily service between Washington Dulles and London Heathrow and daily service between San Francisco and Singapore, Sydney and both Haneda and Narita in Tokyo. Less-than-daily service between Newark and Narita as well as between San Francisco and each Melbourne, Osaka and Seoul will remain.
The domestic cuts will maintain service to all United destinations except Mammoth Lakes, Calif. However, United said it "is closely monitoring demand as well as changes in state and local curfews and government restrictions … and will adjust its schedule accordingly throughout the month."
JetBlue on Wednesday said it was cutting capacity by at least 40 percent in April and May and expected "substantial cuts" in June and July. Customers with changed flights will be notified in a "phased approach" to space out call volumes for customer service.
JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes and president Joanna Geraghty in a letter to employees said they would be taking a 50 percent pay cut during the crisis and have cut more than 75 percent of capital spending projects underway.
So far in March, JetBlue has averaged less than $4 million in daily sales along with $20 million in credits per day for cancellations, Hayes and Geraghty said in the letter. As a comparison, JetBlue's typical daily sales in March last year was about $22 million.
"If you do the math, $4 million per day does not come anywhere close to covering our daily expenses," the executives said. "It is hard to predict how long these conditions will last and how much more challenging the environment may become."
JetBlue also has secured an additional $1 billion in credit, in addition to the about $1.2 billion in cash savings it had at the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, according to Hayes and Geraghty.