Downturn hits international travel; flights from USA cut

— -- The global economic storm is hitting what once was the most profitable part of the airline industry: international travel.

With demand for international trips in free fall, most U.S. and foreign airlines are cutting international service to and from the USA. They're reducing the number of scheduled flights or parking big jets and putting passengers on smaller ones to avoid flying money-losing, half-empty flights.

In March, there will be about 466,000 fewer seats — about 15,000 seats a day — on scheduled non-stop flights from the Lower 48 states to foreign destinations, according to OAG-Official Airline Guide flight schedules analyzed by USA TODAY. Industrywide, that's a 5.3% March reduction year over year. Some carriers have cut capacity to and from the USA by a third.

The heavily traveled business route between London and New York began to sag in the fall, after Wall Street melted down. Now, most international carriers feel the recession wherever they fly.

"This has the signs of being a travel downturn that's deeper and longer than the one after the Sept. 11 attacks," says Simon Talling-Smith, British Airways' top executive for the Americas. "This is a much more global downturn than that one was."

China traffic down

Reports from the International Air Transport Association, which represents more than 200 airlines worldwide, support that. Airlines' first- and business-class cabins are feeling the impact most acutely.

IATA chief economist Brian Pearce says international passenger traffic in trans-Atlantic business and first class dropped 9% in November. Across the Pacific, premium-cabin passenger traffic plummeted 17%.

"Businesses are cutting costs wherever they can, and business people are just not traveling," Pearce says. "There's no sign of this leveling off."

Six U.S. carriers — American, Delta, JetBlue, Northwest, United and US Airways — have received permission from the U.S. Department of Transportation to postpone the launch of new international routes.