US Airways drops several European flights
Friday, October 30th, 2009
By: Elizabeth Fiedler
efiedler@whyy.org
A decision announced earlier this week by US Airways will have some effect on Philadelphia's air travel. None of the roughly 1,000 jobs the airline plans to cut next year are based at Philadelphia International Airport. But US Airways will end Philadelphia flights to five European cities.
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It's a matter of simple economics, says US Airways spokesman Morgan Durrant.
Durrant: To make trans-Atlantic flying profitable we need to have a healthy business travel demand and one of the staples of a struggling economy is businesses tend to cut back on travel expenditures, and so business traffic has gone down and we have yet to see it return to prior 2008 levels.
The President of Select Greater Philadelphia, an economic development marketing organization that tries to attract companies to the area, says the airline's decision to suspend the European flights probably won't make it tougher to bring businesses to the area. He says travelers to and from the affected airports, in England, Ireland, Sweden, and Italy, will continue to be served by plenty of other airports across Europe.