The Essentials

Airline Cuts Across America

The airlines have already furloughed more than 40,000 employees.

And following that, they’ve dropped a number of their routes. And in the process, a lot of smaller U.S. cities are feeling the hurt.

Joplin Regional Airport in Missouri used to see about 100,000 passengers in 2019, but now it’s less than half, at just 4,000 passengers a month and only five flights a day.

You’ll find a lot of planes at the airport in Roswell, New Mexico, where in some cases there are just two commercial flights a day.

But that’s even worse in Dubuque, Iowa, where American Airlines, the only commercial carrier at the airport, has suspended all service through at least the end of this year.

And more cuts are on the way across America.The once lucrative non-stop transcontinental flights between Los Angeles and New York, where American Airlines once had ten flights a day in each direction, has now been slashed to only two flights a day eastbound or westbound.