United Airlines on Tuesday threatened to withdraw from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport if the Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t grant the carrier more flight slots.
“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,” the company said in an internal email, according to Reuters.
United Airlines used to have more slots at JFK but leased them long-term to Delta Airlines in 2015 as part of a pivot to flying out of Newark, the carrier’s hub. United Airlines returned to JFK in 2021.
United currently flies two planes to Los Angeles and two to San Francisco daily from the airport.
The company seeks the space to better compete with other carriers at JFK with more robust schedules, noting in the internal memo to employees that “JetBlue currently flies to Los Angeles six times more often from JFK than United, and American flies there more than four times as frequently.”
United Airlines also told employees that the move “would obviously be a tough and frustrating step to take and one that we have worked really hard to prevent,” according to Bloomberg.
The carrier argues that the airport has the wherewithal to expand flights. There have been numerous infrastructure improvements at JFK since 2008, when the flight capacity was increased to its current level of 81 operations per hour.
Improvements by the FAA and Port Authority included “the widening of runways, construction of multi-entrance taxiways, and the creation of aligned high-speed turnoffs,” United Airlines said in its internal email.
The FAA said in a statement that 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,” Reuters reported.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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