Wheels up, flights down

In light of news that Delta and Northwest pilot unions have worked out a tentative deal with Delta management, USA Today has an interesting graphic on decreasing flight capacity.

Using airline schedule data for October 2008, the paper showed a 6.7 percent decrease in flight capacity for Tennessee.

Specifically, MEM is expected to be down 7.6 percent, BNA (Nashville) is expected to be down 5.7 percent, and surprisingly, TYS (Knoxville) fares the worst with a drop of 8.7 percent.


That doesn't necessarily mean fewer daily flights, however. Airlines can decrease capacity by cutting the number of daily flights or by using smaller planes for regular routes.

Only eight states — Washington, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Colorado, Vermont, Maine and Louisiana — were expected to see an increase in flight capacity.