Delta's Move from Cincinnati Is Closer to Asian Markets

(MoneyWatch)  Delta Air Lines reported that it intends to shuffle its planes to increase its Pacific Northwest presence and boost its flights to Asia. That means its Boeing 767ER crew base at Cincinnati/North Kentucky International Airport will probably close this year.

The crew base closure would affect 225 pilots. Delta also extended offers to buy out around 1,000 members of its ground, customer service and baggage crew at the airport. A Delta spokeswoman declined to state how many positions Delta wanted to terminate, but said the buyouts are being offered to all employees.

Delta claims that increased use of its larger hubs, such as New York's John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia airports, have caused its initial plans to use Cincinnati as a major hub to disappear. Delta cut its daily departures in Cincinnati from 480 in 2001 to now about 165.

Delta's Asian destinations would be best helped by the 767-300ER, a long-haul aircraft that carries 216 passengers and can fly 6,565 nautical miles -- easily making a flight from Seattle to Tokyo. (Perhaps this is our hint that Delta has managed to snag JAL from AMR Corp.'s American Airlines?)

It should be no surprise that the announcement came on the heels of another, that Delta's merger with Northwest Airlines is now complete. (The merger won't change Northwest's Minneapolis-St. Paul. Memphis and Detroit hubs.) To me, hubs in both Detroit and Memphis seem to make Cincinnati redundant, especially if there's going to be a huge push to service Asian routes.

To add more fuel to the fire, today Delta announced it will be flying five times a week to Incheon International Airport in Korea. That doesn't mean that Cincinnati's crew base will probably close, it means it will close. Delta has moved on and decided the future is in travel to Asia. You can't blame them, with everyone and their economist predicting China and India as the next global superpowers. For Delta, it only makes good business sense to plan their revenue stream accordingly.