Delta said Thursday it would need further capacity cuts by the end of the year and disclosed plans to suspend several international routes, beginning in September.

Citing the recession, rising fuel costs and weak demand stemming from the H1N1 virus and other factors, Delta said in a note to employees that it needed to realign capacity with demand to preserve the benefits of its merger with Northwest.

The plan calls for the suspension of service from the Cincinnati hub to Frankfurt and London, leaving the Air France/KLM hubs of Amsterdam and Paris as Delta's only European destinations from Cincinnati. Atlanta-Seoul and Atlanta-Shanghai services will be suspended and replaced with service via the Detroit or Tokyo connecting hubs, or on other SkyTeam partner airlines. Also to be scratched is service between New York and Edinburgh, Scotland.

In addition, frequencies to Mexico City from Detroit and Atlanta will be reduced, and seasonal services to various Mexican beach resorts will be postponed.

The carrier did not specify any cutbacks for domestic markets but said its goal was to achieve a 10% system capacity reduction for 2009 compared with 2008, up from the previous target of about an 8% reduction. The move involves a total reduction of international capacity of about 15%, up from 10%.

Delta said its long-term business plan continued to rely heavily on international expansion, noting that it remained committed to adding other international routes to its network this year. Three of the routes have been launched: Atlanta-Johannesburg, Salt Lake City-Tokyo and Detroit-Shanghai. Three others are to begin in the second half of the year, beginning with Los Angeles-Sydney on July 1 and followed by New York-Prague and Pittsburgh-Paris.

This report has been clarified to state that some of Delta's new routes have already started.