United who is no stranger to recent economic influences will need to cut over 1,500 people this summer including 1,000 of its pilots. If you consider that each pilot will make 3 trips a day that means hundreds of thousands of lost seats every day for the company.

The Air Transportation sector has been feeling some serious pain in the past 6 months with a handful of small and medium sized players closing up shop for good. Hawaii which is completely dependent on air travel has seen 2 of its regional airlines close this year and no company has gone untouched.

Although the summer months will see lower then usual travel the industry wide cutbacks will start to take effect this fall with both holiday and political travel at its head it can be expected that even more delays and canceled flights will happen at a time when the economy needs to jump back into gear.