And puts it on the front page of Friday’s paper “American Airlines executives hint at Charlotte flight cuts.”

Well yes they did say during yesterday’s conference call. But the even bigger hint came two weeks ago when US Airways loaded a new draft schedule for next summer that didn’t include three summer-seasonal flights destinations from Charlotte that US Airways first flew in 2014: Brussels, Lisbon, and Manchester.

While the Charlotte Observer story is decent as far as it goes, it doesn’t get into the fleet usage aspect of the issue. Recall that the draft flight schedule says that US Airways and only US Airways (and not American Airlines) jets will continue to fly all the combined airlines flights to Europe from Charlotte and Philadelphia. The schedule also suggests that US Airways’ Boeing 767-200ER will retire by next summer. This will reduce US Airway’s widebody fleet from 31 to 24, not enough planes to cover what the airline currently has posted online, even after dropping the Brussels, Lisbon, and Manchester flights from CLT.

American Airlines/US Airways latest financial fillings provides some additional details that’s consistent with this scenario. A Form 8-K files in January says the combined carriers anticipated having seven 767-200s — those would be US Airways’ — in service at the end of the year. A Form 8-K filed yesterdays shows the airlines now only plan to have only six in service at the end of the year. So US Airways seems to be accelerating 767-200 retirements, which would tie in well with the type being gone by the summer. And if that’s the case, then US Airways still has some additional European flights to cut.