Where have all the airline seats gone?

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Submitted by Ethan on September 14, 2009 at 12:21 PM

Has anyone else noticed the rash of disappearing airline seats lately?

I make a lot of travel arrangements for my boss and most of the time, she knows the airline schedules better than I do since she’s always up in the air… so to speak. But lately, when she says something along the lines of: “Get me on the 6:30 US Air from PITT to LGA.”, I can’t find the flight; it was always there before but now… it’s gone.

Flummoxed—I always wanted to use that word—by the disappearance, she has to take a later flight which lands at an airport farther from her home than LGA. I know that she believes me when I tell her that the flight is canceled but I still get a little frustrated at the airline for up and canceling a flight that we’ve come to depend on.

Then, yesterday, I came across an article in Yahoo titled: ”Airlines offer lightest fall schedules since 2001”

It’s not that the airline is out to get us! As the article explains:

The U.S. airline industry is shrinking to a size not seen since the months after the 2001 terror attacks .

The airlines have been trimming flights for the past two years, matching the falling demand for air travel. Additional capacity cuts are under way at American, the nation’s second-largest carrier, and at No. 3 United.

It could get worse.

Great… “it could get worse”; that’s just what we needed to hear but at least now I have something to show the boss when she recites another flight from memory that’s been canceled. It’s not us, it’s the economy!

Flickr Creative Commons image by Olastuen

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