Tag Archives for slots.
The FAA’s Air Traffic Organization is severely understaffed with controllers. New York TRACON is less than 60% staffed with fully-trained controllers. And the government is asking airlines to reduce their summer schedules out of New York airports. Ironically the government won’t let JetBlue and American Airlines fully participate to help solve this challenge.
There are 1,430 slot machines in the Las Vegas airport. Those slot machines have generated $1 billion in revenue.
New York was so neglected before the pandemic, that American Airlines Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja revealed during the government’s anti-trust trial against the partnership that they actually were forced to give back 7 slots at New York JFK in 2019 – because they did not even properly track how many slots they had in New York.
One week ago the British government announced sanctions against three Russian airlines: Aeroflot, Ural Airlines and Rossiya Airlines. This kept them from selling or leasing takeoff and landing slots at U.K. airports. Russian airlines already couldn’t enter U.K. airspace.
We now know what this means in practice for their London Heathrow slots: Russian airlines don’t just lose the ability to profit from their slots, they actually lose the slots.
The U.S. will extend slot waivers at New York JFK, LaGuardia and Washington National through October. United, Delta, and American asked for this jointly, to protect their turf without actually having to fly full schedules.
Among other reasons for agreeing, the FAA cites “global vaccination rates” as well as “continued unpredictability of [international] travel restrictions” and “the disparity between demand for domestic air travel and demand for international air travel” despite the fact that only one of the three slot-controlled airports in the U.S. (New York JFK) carries much international traffic at all.
New York LaGuardia, New York JFK and Washington National airports are ‘slot controlled’. That means there are limits on the number of takeoffs and landings at each airport, and the right to use those have been given (free!) to incumbent airlines as a property right. That’s a huge subsidy to incumbent carriers.
Normally slots come with ‘use it or lose it’ rules. If an airline doesn’t make use of their slots 80% of the time, those slots can be reassigned to another carrier. As a result you’ll see airlines flying more or less ghost flights, service designed to hold the slot rather than meet any economic need.
With British Airways terminating all of its cabin crew and offering to re-hire about 70% for as little as half what they were making before, the U.K. parliament is taking up my suggestion that the BA shouldn’t be able to keep its free gift of London Heathrow slots – their most valuable asset, which protects them from competition.
Virgin Atlantic announced an expansion plan to become Britain’s second flag carrier, adding 84 new routes. They’d fly to 12 domestic destinations in the U.K., 37 European routes, and add 35 long haul routes to places like Delhi, Havana, Jakarta and Tel Aviv.
There is absolutely no chance of their announced growth plan happening. It simply isn’t real. It’s pure posturing to bolster their case for government handouts. In fairness, they’re correct that the handouts shouldn’t all go to British Airways – but they shouldn’t be given to Virgin, either.
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 »
