Delta Air Lines plans to continue reshaping its network by adding 1,000 daily departures in August, building on a similarly sized expansion of July’s timetable, before “taking a pause” and evaluating fall demand trends, CEO Ed Bastian said.

“That would put our domestic capacity down somewhere between 55% and 60% of what our normal schedule is,” Bastian said during a virtual shareholders meeting July 18. “Once we get to that level, then we’ll take a pause, and we’ll see how demand looks post Labor Day before we decide to add further domestic flights back.”

Bastian said that the international schedule is “still very early in the recovery phase” because of myriad travel restrictions. “I think international travel is probably going to lag domestic by up to 12 months,” he said.

Before the pandemic, Delta’s typical daily system operated about 5,500 departures, though it varied by season. 

Load factors for June were approaching Delta’s self-imposed 60% limit put in place through September to help create social distancing on flights. Earlier in the month, it was trending in the mid-40% range, but is now closer to 50%, Bastian said. 

“The numbers are a bit lower as compared if we had an uncapped load factor,” he said. “As the business starts to return, as demand starts to grow, and if people have more confidence in their travel experience, we will decide later in this year when we start to ease up on that cap restriction.”

Broader industry figures reflect Bastian’s cautious optimism. The U.S. Transportation Security Administration processed 576,514 people through its checkpoints June 18, the highest one-day figure since March 20, when the novel coronavirus pandemic’s ramifications were quickly ramping up. While encouraging, the figure still represents a 79% year-over-year decline.

One of the demand decline’s most significant trends is fleet downsizing. Delta brought forward its MD-88 and MD-90 fleet retirement schedules and is phasing out its Boeing 777-200ER and -200LR fleets. Bastian suggested that Delta’s major fleet-reduction moves may not be over. 

“We’ll continue to look at other fleet types as well as planes within sub-fleets within our larger fleet family for retirement decisions,” he said. “There will probably be a few more made before the end of this year.”