United Cuts Flights Over Coronavirus Concerns, Joins Delta And American In Reducing Flight Schedules

United Airlines (UAL) is the latest airline to cut flights as it deals with the effects of the coronavirus on its business. American also announced an international capacity reduction on Saturday, and Delta cut flights by 40% on Friday.

A message from Oscar Munoz, CEO at United, and J. Scott Kirby, president of the airline, to nearly 100,000 employees, said that “you won’t be surprised to hear that the impact of the coronavirus on our business has also gotten quite a bit worse.”

The company expects to see revenue down in March by $1.5 billion over last year at the same time as cancelations continue. Munoz and Kirby said they expect numbers of customers and revenue to continue to “decline sharply in the days and weeks ahead.”

To mitigate the fallout from the coronavirus, United said it will cut corporate officers’ salary by 50%. The airline will cut flights by 50% for April and May, and expect these cuts to continue into the summer travel period.

They also expect load factors to decline into the 20 to 30% range, with Munoz and Kirby saying, “that’s if things don’t get worse.” They emphasized that it is nearly impossible to run a business that is based on “Connecting people. Uniting the world” when medical experts say that health and safety depend on staying home.

United said it is working on ways to keep pay in place for its employees even as the COVID-19 situation worsens and demand temporarily plummets to zero.

Shares of United stock were down 13.21% as of 2:09 p.m. EDT on Monday.