Illinois Coronavirus: Airlines Want To Ax Flights To Chicago

CHICAGO — A group of airlines on Tuesday asked the U.S. Transportation Department for approval to suspend flights to more than two dozen U.S. airports, including Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

The request comes as the number of new coronavirus cases in the United States topped 1 million Tuesday and air travel demand has decreased by more than 95 percent, according to a report by Reuters.

Delta, JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines have requested to suspend flights to various cities. The companies are following United and Frontier Airlines, whose requests to suspend flights were mostly denied by the Department of Transportation earlier this week.

In this latest round of requests, JetBlue has requested a temporary halt in service to Chicago. The airline also wants to halt flights to 15 other U.S. airports including Atlanta, Houston, Seattle, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Dallas and Detroit through Sept. 30.

JetBlue is also the first major airline to require passengers to wear face coverings. Most airlines already required flight attendants to wear masks.

Delta wants to suspend flights to airports including: Lansing, Flint and Kalamazoo in Michigan; Worcester, Massachusetts; Hilton Head, South Carolina; Pocatello, Idaho; Brunswick, Georgia; and Melbourne, Florida.

Spirit Airlines asked for approval to suspend flights to Charlotte, North Carolina, Denver, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Seattle, Portland and Phoenix.

Earlier this month, the department rejected most of Spirit’s requests to halt flights, requiring the company to resume flights to New York City and other tri-state airports after it suspended service to all New York, New Jersey and Connecticut airports it serves.

The department also had previously required JetBlue to keep flying to nine destinations, including Portland, Dallas, Houston and Minneapolis.

About 2.3 million people passed through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints on March 1, according to The Associated Press, a number unchanged from the same day last year. The numbers careened sharply lower from that point on, plunging below 100,000 by early April. Airline officials say most of the people still flying are health care workers fighting the coronavirus outbreak and individuals reuniting with family members.

Airlines for America, a trade group for the leading U.S. carriers, told The Associated Press that the average domestic flight in the past week had 17 passengers.

In another change to domestic flights, as some airlines have announced they are no longer booking the middle seats on their planes, American Airlines says it is now leaving half of its middle seats empty.

This week, a passenger told CBS that there was a lack of social distancing on her flight out of O'Hare even though there were only 20 passengers onboard.

"It was like a claustrophobic scene ... we didn’t have space," the passenger said. "And I was in the middle. So everybody was together, basically. If someone sneezed, we all would have been sick."