Airline jettisons service to New York from Scotland

Published on Thursday 11 June 2009 22:03

EDINBURGH is to lose one of two air links to New York after Delta Air Lines yesterday announced suspension of the route from this autumn.

Daily flights to JFK airport are expected to be halted in September as part of major cutbacks by the United States airline.

The service was launched only in May last year after Delta scrapped its Edinburgh-Atlanta flights the previous autumn.

Delta said that it was suffering from the recession, rising oil prices and from the spread of swine flu.

The airline said passenger income had fallen by 20 per cent between January and April compared with a year ago, and it expected the trend to continue. The news came just hours after Continental Airlines celebrated the fifth anniversary of its Edinburgh-Newark flights, close to New York.

The airline said the service, which operates up to two flights a day, had carried more than 650,000 passengers and contributed 184 million to the Scottish economy.

A spokesman for BAA, which owns Edinburgh airport, said: "We hope this suspension is short lived and that Delta will re-instate the link once economic conditions improve.

"Clearly, this decision is part of a global strategy by Delta to reduce costs in the face of the current recession, and Edinburgh is only one of a number of international routes affected."