The shutdown will have no effect on Lehigh Valley International Airport, LVIA spokeswoman Susan Kittle said.
View full sizeIn this file photo, one Comair plane takes off while another Comair plane taxis to the terminal at the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Hebron, Ky.Delta Air Lines is shutting down its shrunken, 35-year-old regional carrier Comair at the end of September as it switches to bigger jets and it is sending termination notices to its 1,700 remaining employees.
Comair is down to 290 flights a day. More than 1,000 Comair employees are in the Cincinnati and northern Kentucky region, some 700 of those in Kentucky.
The shutdown will have no effect on Lehigh Valley International Airport, LVIA spokeswoman Susan Kittle said. The regional carrier provided service out of LVIA years ago, but it no longer does, she said.
Comair has slashed its fleet, flights and workforce in the past seven years. Delta said the smaller regional planes are expensive to fly because they are not as fuel-efficient and cost more to maintain as the fleet ages.
"We just really couldn't get the cost structure to where we wanted to get it," said Don Bornhorst, senior vice president of Delta Connection and a former Comair president. "It ultimately was a cost issue; it wasn't a quality issue with Comair. They're a good airline, great employees, very innovative ... we just could not solve the cost issues."
Delta, based in Atlanta, had about 500 of the 50-seat regional jets in 2008 and plans to reduce that to 125 within two years. Most of that flying will be done by new 76-seat jets as well as the 117-seat Boeing 717s that Delta is leasing from Southwest Airlines.
Delta said today that it has stopped flying 16 of the remaining Comair 50-seaters, and will lease the carrier's other 28 planes to other operators. Bornhorst said employees have 60-day termination notices. A small group of employees will remain after the Sept. 29 shutdown to handle details of the closure.
Comair handles only about 1 percent of Delta's flying, so the closure won't result in significant changes to Delta's network. Delta also said it won't mean fewer flights out of Comair's base at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. Besides Cincinnati, Comair also has hubs in Detroit and at New York's JFK and LaGuardia airports.
Comair was founded in 1977, flying three propeller-driven Piper Navajo aircraft. It started operating as Delta Connection in 1984 and became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delta in 2000. Comair helped expand the regional jet business when it began flying Bombardier CRJ jets.
"As you can imagine, we're all very sad," said Lynn Dziad, spokeswoman for the Teamsters local that represents more than 400 flight attendants. She marked her 22nd anniversary with Comair just last week. "It's been a wonderful company. A lot of incredible people have worked here."