Delta’s crew base in Cincinnati for about 225 Boeing 767-ER pilots likely will close later this year, Delta officials said.

The move would not affect the level of operations in Cincinnati, where the aircraft is used only for service to Paris. Delta said that there are no plans to cease that service and that its plans call for total daily departures out of Cincinnati to remain between 165 and 175 this year. The airline’s Cincinnati crew base for other aircraft will remain in place, with about 225 pilots.

The likely closure of the 767-ER base, however, is symbolic of how much Delta’s plans in Cincinnati have changed over the past five years. In January 2005, it operated about 600 flights a day there, but that number has progressively dwindled, with regional flying taking over most of what remained, and services to London and Frankfurt have been cut.

Jim Graham, Delta’s VP-flying operations, noted the changes in a Feb. 3 memo to Cincinnati-based pilots about the likely closing of the 767-ER base.

At one time, he said, having the base there “made a lot of sense in our global network plan, with several international destinations planned to be added beyond our current [Cincinnati-Paris] service,” he wrote. “However, our ability to flow aircraft out of larger hubs, the increasing emphasis on New York’s JFK airport as a gateway to Europe, Africa and Asia and the growth of LaGuardia as the primary origination-and-destination passenger hub in the Northeast have caused those plans to change.”

“Network is also planning capacity increases from the Pacific Northwest to markets in Asia, most likely with the 767-300-ER,” he added.

Graham added, however, that Cincinnati, which he still described as a Delta “hub,” is “still a valuable asset in our network.”

Delta plans to “capitalize on its strengths,” he said, by using the 165 to 175 daily departures — more than 30 of them on mainline service — to complement Detroit flying by operating alternating banks from each hub. The Cincinnati services also will likely provide additional feeder traffic to Minneapolis/St. Paul and New York LaGuardia, he added.

In other Delta news, the airline yesterday reported a 5% year-over-year decline in systemwide traffic in January on a 5.6% cut in capacity. Load factor increased 0.5 points to 76.6%.

Domestic traffic dropped 2.7% on 1.9% less capacity, while international traffic fell 8.3% on 11% less capacity.