WARWICK – US Airways this summer will reduce service from Pittsburgh to T.F. Green Airport (PVD) from four daily flights to two, US Airways today confirmed.
The cuts were reported Thursday by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “The Post-Gazette report is accurate,” Morgan Durrant, a spokesman for the Tempe, Ariz.-based airline, told Providence Business News in an e-mail interview.
“This was a tough business decision driven by economics,” Durrant said. “We decided that we could better allocate some aircraft operating out of Pittsburgh and opted to include reducing PVD frequency to that end.”
The airline has no current plans to replace the T.F. Green flights with flights to other destinations, he said. US Airways now averages 28 daily departures from T.F. Green – 10 Mainline and 18 US Airways Express, Durrant said – which the planned cuts will pare to 26.
But, Durrant added, “No other service reductions are planned for PVD.”
US Airways also will pare flights from Pittsburgh to nine other cities nationwide: New York City’s LaGuardia Airport; Chicago’s O’Hare Airport; Philadelphia; Albany, Erie and Syracuse, N.Y.; Newark, N.J.; Indianapolis, Ind.; and Toronto. “We are not happy about it,” Kent George, director of the Allegheny County Airport Authority, told the Post-Gazette.
Pittsburgh was once the airline’s largest hub, with flights to 112 cities. Though downgraded in 2004 to a “key focus city,” it still ranks fourth in usage with 148 flights per day – 36 US Airways Mainline and 112 US Airways Express – to 53 non-stop destinations, according to www.USAirways.com. Hub city Charlotte, N.C., sees 535 flights per day, followed by Philadelphia with 431 and Phoenix with 301.
The cuts, slated to begin July 7, will leave the Pittsburgh airport with only 127 flights per day, less than US Airways flies to Las Vegas, New York or Washington, D.C., and 76 percent less than in 2001, the Post-Gazette said.
