Wednesday airline cuts latest: Singapore, United and Virgin Australia

Another day of dramatic worldwide travel bans has led to another raft of capacity cuts from the world’s biggest airlines.

Singapore and United are among the major carriers to cut hard, with the former announcing on Tuesday it would operate just 50 per cent of its capacity until the end of April.

The airline called it an “unprecedented” time in the industry, adding, “We have lost a large amount of our traffic in a very short time, and it will not be viable for us to maintain our current network. Make no mistake – we expect the pace of this deterioration to accelerate. The SIA Group must be prepared for a prolonged period of difficulty.”

Other major announcements overnight include:

• Virgin Australia and budget subsidiary Tigerair suspended all international flights from 30 March to 14 June and will reduce domestic capacity by 50 per cent for the same time period. The reduction is equivalent to grounding 53 aircraft.
• United announced a 60 per cent schedule reduction in April, which includes a 42 per cent cut across the US and Canada and an 85 per cent decrease in international flights.
• Hawaiian will suspend nonstop services between Honolulu and Sapporo through to 21 July.
• Brussels Airlines will suspend all flights from 21 March to 19 April.
• WestJet will also suspend all international flights for 30 days.
• Finally, LATAM is cutting 90 per cent of its international flights, while fellow South American carriers Aeromexico and Interjet will cut 40 per cent of their operations.