LACROSSE, Wis. – Delta Airlines is furloughing its LaCrosse service on June 4. The main reason: Not enough pilots. Systemwide Delta is dropping 100 flights to “minimize disruptions and bounce back faster when challenges occur.” These are mostly flights served by the corporately separate Delta Connection regional service. At one time Delta and its predecessor Northwest Airlines had almost hourly flights between LaCrosse and its Minneapolis hub at peak times of day, as well as a roundtrip flight to Detroit. Currently there is one plane in and out of LaCrosse daily: Flight 5393 arriving at 3:20 p.m. and departing at 4:05 p.m.
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Allison Ausband, chief customer experience officer: “More than any time in our history, the various factors currently impacting our operation – weather and air traffic control, vendor staffing, increased CoVid case rates contributing to higher-than-planned unscheduled absences in some work groups — are resulting in an operation that isn’t consistently up to the standards Delta has set for the industry in recent years.”