Delta Air Lines to cut 100 daily flights this summer

Delta Air Lines on Thursday announced that it will cut 100 flights from its daily schedule, primarily in the U.S. and Latin America, as the airline business continues to reel from high petroleum prices and supply chain disruptions.

Delta said the cuts would take effect from July 1 to Aug. 7, during the peak of the summer vacation season. 

The company didn’t specify which domestic and international routes were going under the chopping block, but said they were in markets that “Delta frequently serves.”

Demand in the tourism and travel sectors has been outpacing supply, as it has in many parts of the economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The company pointed to issues with its vendors and labor shortages as part of its decision to drop routes.

“Weather and air traffic control, vendor staffing, increased COVID case rates contributing to higher-than-planned unscheduled absences in some work groups – are resulting in an operation that isn’t consistently up to the standards Delta has set for the industry in recent years,” the airline said in a statement.

Delta follows JetBlue and a number of other U.S. carriers in knocking back its peak travel season flight schedules. Like Delta, JetBlue cited staffing issues and air traffic control problems as key reasons for its service decrease.

Economists point to high employment levels now as a key driver of inflation and one of the main pressures now on firms across the economy. 

Currently, 96.4 percent of people who could be working have jobs, according to the latest numbers from the Department of Labor.

Some Congressional Republicans have warned that the economy is now in a “wage-price spiral,” whereby labor-hungry businesses are compelled to increase wages for workers, which then prompts higher retail prices, further fueling inflation.

Democrats, meanwhile, say inflation is caused in part by profiteering in a broad swath of business sectors and especially the energy sector, which has been raking in record earnings.

“Prices are growing three times faster than Americans’ paychecks, and are hammering small businesses struggling to find workers,” Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement.

Petroleum prices are also a perennial issue for the airline industry, which counts the price of fuel as a main component of its overhead.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices have spiked more than 70 percent over the last year, with the price of a barrel of oil still well over $100. 

Updated at 1:12 p.m.