Tag Archives for slots.
The Department of Transportation violated federal law by improperly awarding Washington National Airport’s new long-haul flight slots exclusively to major airlines, ignoring the legal eligibility of Spirit Airlines—improperly treating Alaska Airlines as a small carrier and excluding Spirit Airlines from the competition.
By law, flights to and from Washington’s close-in National airport are limited to 1,250 miles, except for a handful of trips created by Congress and handed out by the Department of Transportation.
DOT finalized its award of new ‘beyond-perimeter’ slots at Washington’s National airport, granting flights to American, Delta, United, Southwest, and Alaska. But their process for doing this was probably illegal.
The Department of Transportation has made its determination about the five new “beyond perimeter” routes that would be permitted to operated at Washington’s National airport. These are flights provided for in the FAA Reauthorization Act which are farther the airport’s current cap for most flights of 1,250 miles. The decision was made months after the agency was statutorily required to announce it.
After a crazy lobbying process, Delta Air Lines achieved a partial success is getting the federal government to approve new ‘beyond perimeter’ slots at Washington’s National Airport.
Now there’s jockeying over which airlines will get the slots, and Delta is pushing to keep one out of the hands of American Airlines.
The best proposals here are for new routes – from Alaska (San Diego), American (San Antonio), and Spirit (San Jose). Breeze says if they were eligible they’d fly somewhere like Boise, Reno, or Albuquerque which are at least places that lack service today. But because Congress got involved micro-managing this based on lobbying on the one hand, and their own political interest on the other, it’s not clear who the FAA can even legally consider for the slots.
Frontier AIrlines flies to National airport 3 times daily, but under the law for purposes of new flights they are not currently an incumbent carrier. Spirit Airlines doesn’t fly there, but they are considered to. And DOT says that Alaska is a “limited incumbent” but failed to consider their codesharing with American Airlines – while listing Air Canada as eligible to operate routes to U.S. domestic destinations. Oops!
Delta managed to obtain slots from Canada’s WestJet that the federal government had fought to keep out of its hands for 12 years.
It appears to be the culmination of Delta’s plan – laid out 15 years ago – to “win New York.”
The current draft of the Senate’s FAA reauthorization bill includes 10 new beyond-perimeter slots for Washington’s National airport. Currently, flights out of that airport are restricted to 1,250 miles except for a handful of exceptions provided in law and handed out by the Department of Transportation.
After breaking up the American Airlines – JetBlue partnership which competed against Delta Air Lines, Delta sees a clear path to dominating in the Northeast. That’s bad for airfares and consumer choice. Now the government has taken another step to limit choices and raise fares.
Delta lays out how United’s response is self-serving. And of course it is! Just like Delta’s request is self-serving. The question isn’t the motives of each airline, it’s how should DOT handle it when an airline no longer wants to serve the route that was awarded to them?
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
