United Airlines may be one of the biggest airlines in the country, but the company's CEO says it isn't getting fair treatment at a key airport serving the nation's largest city.
The John F. Kennedy International Airport is America’s ninth largest airport, according to AirAdvisor, and the 13th biggest airport in the world, typically serving around 60 million customers a year. The airport gets a lot done with a comparatively limited space of eight square miles, as New York-area real estate is one of the scarcest commodities on the planet.
More than 70 airlines fly out of JFK, but the CEO of United Airlines (UAL) feels it's not getting enough slots at the airport, which is industry terminology for confirmed takeoff and landing authorizations.
And if this situation isn’t rectified soon, United says it is ready to pull all its slots from JFK.
United Wants More Slots At JFK
United CEO Scott Kirby has written a letter to Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen, urging it to grant the company additional slots, as reported by Reuters.
If this request is not granted, Kirby has indicted the company is willing to take strong steps. "If we are not able to get additional allocations for multiple seasons, we will need to suspend service at JFK, effective at the end of October," United's email said.
United needs the additional, permanent slots, according to the email, “so that we can grow to be more competitive.” Without increased slots, it cannot serve JFK “effectively compared to the larger schedules and more attractive flight times flown by our competitors” like JetBlue Airways (JBLU) and American Airlines (AAL).
The threat to competition at the airport if United ends service there appears to be small. At the moment, United is only flying twice daily to San Francisco and Los Angeles from JFK.
In response, the FAA released a statement saying it "must consider airspace capacity and runway capacity to assess how changes would affect flights at nearby airports. Any additional slots at JFK would follow the FAA's well-established process of awarding them fairly and to increase competition."
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United Has Previously Shifted Its Focus To Newark
In 2015, United entered into a long-term deal to lease 24 year-round JFK slots to Delta Airlines, as the company was shifting its focus to the nearby Newark Liberty International Airport in northern New Jersey. But seven years is a lifetime in the airline industry, and now United wants back in.
United is the dominant carrier at Newark, according to Skift, but in June, the FAA approved United’s request to temporarily cut about 50 daily summer departures from the airport in order to address congestion. This cut represented 12% of United’s 425 daily flights at Newark.
In its email, United argued that there is room for it to grow at JFK, citing the FAA and the Port Authority’s efforts since 2008 to invest in the airport’s infrastructure, including "the widening of runways, construction of multi-entrance taxiways, and the creation of aligned high-speed turnoffs."
In other United news, the company can happily claim that, as recently reported by The Street, it is one of the American airlines with the fewest traffic delays. This is certainly a nice feather in its cap, but whether it will help the company in its JFK negotiations remains to be seen.
