Airlines cut flights to Mexico

Most of the largest US airlines will temporarily reduce services to Mexico, as swine flu fears keep many US travellers from venturing south of the border.

Continental Airlines, the biggest US carrier to Mexico, said today it will cut by half the number of seats it sells to fly to Mexico beginning on Monday. The Houston-based airline said it will work with travellers to get them where they need to go, although schedules and routes might change.

US Airways Group, another major US carrier to Mexico, said it would reduce its May and June departures to Mexico by 38%, beginning on May 10.

Delta Air Lines also said it would reduce its Mexico service to match declining demand, but it did not indicate how deep the cuts would be.

UAL Corp’s United Airlines said it will cut its weekly flights to Mexico from 61 to 24 this month, beginning on Tuesday. Its June schedule will drop from 90 flights per week to 52. United said Mexico represents less than 2% of its overall capacity.

Continental said it will reduce May flights to Mexico by about 40% and use smaller planes but will continue flying to all 29 Mexican cities it serves. It also extended its waiver policy to let customers with trips booked for Mexico change itineraries without penalty by the end of May.

Continental was running an average of 450 flights a week to Mexico, and the changes will cut its expected May capacity about 2%.

“We were already experiencing soft market conditions due to the economy, and now our Mexico routes in particular have extra weakness,” said Larry Kellner, Continental’s chairman and CEO.

US Airways said it would reduce its schedule by cutting the number of flights and by flying smaller planes, but that it wouldn’t pull out of any Mexican cities altogether.

It also said it would re-evaluate its July and August schedule in the next few weeks. It said it hopes to resume its normal schedule of flights to Mexico on July 2.

US Airways said the planned reductions amount to 0.5% of its systemwide departures.

Delta officials said they were reducing flight frequencies and switching to smaller jets on some flights to pare capacity to Mexico while still serving 11 Mexican cities. Atlanta-based Delta, which also operates Northwest Airlines, runs 350 flights a week to Mexico.

AirTran Airways, which operates only 16 weekly flights to the resort town of Cancun, will cut two of those flights. Spokesman Christopher White said the decision was based on demand over the past several weeks, not just since the flu epidemic hit.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention advised against non-essential travel to Mexico, and European Union officials advised their citizens to postpone non-essential travel to parts of Mexico and the US affected by swine flu.

Meanwhile, the Caribbean is reporting an unexpected jump in tourism as US holidaymakers once bound for Mexico’s sunny shores turn to new destinations amid worries about swine flu.

Travel agents in the US say they are aggressively recommending Jamaica and the Dominican Republic as alternatives to Cancun and other Mexican beach resorts because they are close and affordable.

“The seats are selling out so quickly that the rates on the airlines have just skyrocketed,” said Barbara Gomez, a Tripology travel expert based in Pennsylvania. “They’re both very popular destinations.”

The increase in flights and cruise ship arrivals to the Caribbean comes as the region struggles to revive its tourism industry, with several nations reporting double-digit drops in visits from last year – a slump that officials have blamed on the global economic crisis.