Delta to cut NWA's Tokyo-HNL capacity

Delta Air Lines plans to reduce capacity to Tokyo next year, including flights from Honolulu.

The change is scheduled for June 1, but some of the change in service could begin as early as March 28.

In a filing with the U.S. Department of Transportation on Dec. 9, Atlanta-based Delta (NYSE: DAL) said it intends to replace Northwest Airlines as the operating carrier on daily routes from Portland, Ore., Guam and Honolulu to Tokyo.

The Eagan, Minn.-based Northwest (NYSE: NWA), which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Oct. 29, currently flies 243-seat Airbus A-330-200s on the routes.

Delta will replace those planes with 221-seat Boeing 767-300.

While daily service on each route will continue, the annual loss in air capacity between Honolulu and Tokyo totals 8,030 seats.

“We view this as taking the two combined fleets of Northwest and Delta and fine-tuning the fleet to match capacity to demand,” Alexander Van der Bellen, Delta’s managing director for government affairs and associate general counsel told PBN. “The airline industry is a very tight-margin business, and having a few too many seats or too few can make the difference in making money or not making money on the route.”

Van der Bellen said the “network optimization is a smart move” that ensures long-term profitability of the routes and benefits consumers.

Delta announced earlier this month that it will trim its system-wide capacity by up to 8 percent in 2009 and suggested jobs cuts are on the way due to the global economic slowdown and reduced demand.