VALDOSTA — With airlines hemorrhaging money due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Valdosta Regional Airport has seen its scheduled passenger flights cut back once again.

Delta Air Lines, the only carrier servicing the airport, reduced its operations to one flight a day each way between Valdosta and Atlanta, according to Delta staff.

The normal flight schedule for Valdosta Regional is three flights each way each day except Saturday, with only two flights that day.

The first cutback came April 8, when Delta scaled Valdosta back to two daily flights.

Delta then cut back to a single daily flight about 10 days ago, said Jim Galloway, airport manager.

“We were having one, two or three people on a flight,” he said.

Normally, the 150 seats a day available on Delta from Valdosta had more than 80% occupancy, Galloway said.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which offers financial aid to struggling airports, requires carriers to maintain routes they were running as of March 1, though they could adjust the number of flights on those routes, he said.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the only destination available from Valdosta, has lost about 94% of its passenger traffic during the pandemic, Galloway said. Valdosta Regional Airport’s numbers should look similar, he said.

Valdosta Regional Airport is suffering its most significant financial distress in terms of car rentals, he said. About 20% of the airport’s internal revenue comes from auto rentals, and with so few passengers, car rentals have dwindled, Galloway said.

The airport has rental desks for Hertz and Avis, as well as a drop-off point for Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

“We hope to turn the corner in the next couple of months,” Galloway said. However, plans to add a fourth daily flight in June are now uncertain, he said.