Cleveland dropped as hub airport by United Airlines

Air travelers flying out of Cleveland on United Airlines flights are in for troublesome times as the airline has decided to curtail selling plane tickets on flights out of this airport. The airline recently said that it is facing great financial losses at its hub airport at Cleveland and has therefore decided to cut daily flights drastically. The airline also said that it is dropping Cleveland as its hub airport as well.

Jeff Smisek, CEO of United Airlines, recently wrote to the airline staff saying that Cleveland will no longer be used as a hub airport for connecting customers coming from other airports around the United States. He said that the daily flights would be axed in a big way and there will only be 72 daily departures instead of the existing 199 from Cleveland by June 2014.

Smisek said that Cleveland has not been profitable as a hub airport for nearly a decade now. The annual losses had been tremendous. He said that the annual losses amounted to several millions of dollars in recent years. As per him the company is not ready to bear these losses any more. United Airlines had already indicated last November that its strategy is to cut $2 billion in annual spending in the coming year. This will be done by shifting flights services, improving upon the maintenance procedures, and asking the workers to become more productive.