 Delta Air Lines, the biggest and most profitable U.S. airline, lost 534 million in the first quarter, a setback that will appear trivial when the full force of the pandemic is revealed in the current quarter. Delta warned Wednesday that revenue during the April-through-June quarter, typically a period of harried travel, will plummet by 90 compared with last year, when there were no government travel restrictions and flights were full. These are truly unprecedented times for all of us, CEO Ed Bastian said. Delta is the first U.S. carrier to detail the damage that began to emerge in at the tail end of the first quarter, although United Airlines said Monday that it would record a pretax loss of 2.1 billion, confirming what most had suspected. The focus now at Delta and other airlines is to hunker down, cut costs, and borrow billions of dollars needed to ride out the pandemic. The fate of Delta and other airlines will depend on whether that is a matter of months, or years. Industry leaders just weeks ago talked of a slump that would be followed by a sharp rebound once the public felt that the outbreak was under control. Theyre now bracing for a much more painful and drawn out recovery. Flights within the United States in the past week have averaged about 12 passengers each, according to trade group Airlines for America. And there are already 75 fewer flights than is typical. Delta is now paying out more in refunds for cancelled flights than it receives from new bookings. At the end of March, it was burning through 100 million a day, though it hopes to cut that rate in half before July. With passenger traffic roughly 5 of year-ago levels, Delta is taking an ax to its schedule, cutting passenger-carrying capacity in the second quarter by 85, with the deepest... 