In all, the airport will lose about 200 weekly flights when the airlines' fall schedules kick in after the Labor Day weekend. If there's any good news, it's that the cuts aren't as bad as expected. In June, the airport predicted the loss of about 244 weekly flights.

"From an industry perspective, we're actually doing pretty good. There are cities losing 15 to 30 percent and everywhere in-between," said Bradley D. Penrod, Allegheny County Airport Authority executive director. "You don't want to lose any service, but it's not as bad, compared to what the industry is doing."

While nearly all carriers at the airport will be making cuts, the largest number will come from US Airways, still the dominant carrier. The latest reductions will leave the airline with about 58 daily departures from Pittsburgh. At one time, it had more than 600.

Among the reductions, US Airways will be dropping all 13 weekly commuter flights to Harrisburg and Richmond and another six a week to St. Louis. It also will be cutting three weekly non-stop flights to Los Angeles and four weekly to San Francisco.

The carrier also will be eliminating nine weekly commuter flights to Charlotte, but will offset that by adding seven mainline flights a week.

Morgan Durrant, a US Airways spokesman, attributed the cutbacks for the most part to the high fuel costs that have plagued the industry for much of the year.

"We've had to make some tough decisions," he said.

The Harrisburg service, he added, "probably made sense when crude oil was less than $120 a barrel. We just can't justify operating it with the high operating costs."

Pittsburgh isn't the only airport in the US Airways system facing cutbacks, he said. For example, the airline in October plans to cut service in Las Vegas by 25 percent and Phoenix by 10 percent.

Southwest Airlines also announced this week that it would be cutting one of its six daily nonstop flights to Philadelphia from Pittsburgh in January as part of a six percent reduction in departures nationwide.

Despite the latest reductions, Pittsburgh is expected to lose less service than some comparable airports. Cleveland Hopkins, for example, was expected to lose 1,119 flights a week and Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky was looking at a cut of 703 a week.

Mr. Penrod said the airport authority already has started talking to other airlines about adding non-stop service to the two California markets to replace that cut by US Airways.

"We believe there is demand for more than one a day," he said.

The authority also has been working with airports in Harrisburg, Erie, Johnstown, Latrobe, State College, Franklin, and Du Bois on a plan to contract with a carrier to provide feeder service into Pittsburgh.

So far, four airlines have expressed an interest -- Air Azul, Cape Air, Gulfstream and Paragon Express. The airports are hoping to be in the position to start service by summer or fall of 2009, he said.

Mr. Durrant said US Airways isn't planning any changes in its October schedule from Pittsburgh. He also doesn't expect the airline to drop all nonstop service to Los Angeles or San Francisco, although he noted even that could change depending on the economy and the price of oil.

"We know that's valuable service to Pittsburgh. It's still there and we will continue to fly it," he said.