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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Another airline is cutting a route from Salt Lake City International Airport as air carriers try to counter soaring fuel costs by trimming flights.
Continental is the latest to announce plans to tighten service from the Utah airport. Houston-based Continental will drop a daily nonstop flight between Salt Lake City and its hub at Newark, N.J., in September.
"In response to the cost pressures that the record price of fuel is putting on our business, we looked at our system to evaluate which flights were no longer profitable with fuel at these current levels," Continental spokeswoman Julie King said.
According to a story in Saturday's Salt Lake Tribune, the Continental flight is the 13th route Salt Lake City has lost to surging fuel prices.
"Given the economic climate, it is something that we have anticipated and expect it to continue through the end of the year," airport spokeswoman Barbara Gann said.
The Salt Lake City-Newark cut is part of Continental's plan to shrink its U.S. capacity by 16 percent. Continental will continue to fly three times a day between Salt Lake City International Airport and its hub at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.
In May, JetBlue Airways said it will end service from Salt Lake to San Francisco and Burbank, Calif., on July 8.
And earlier this year, Delta Air Lines terminated flights from its Utah hub to 10 cities and trimmed the number of daily flights to several more destinations.
------ Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
