New York and Boston
Posted on 01/17/2007
I have had a couple of inquiries lately on why we have seen a reduction in service to New York and Boston in recent months. Lets start with New York, LaGuardia. AirTran has reduced flight schedules from 3 to 2 per day but not because they wanted to. In order to fly into New York’s LaGuardia airport an airline must own a set of slots, one for landing and one for takeoff. Frankly, AirTran owns very few of these slots because most are owned by legacy carriers having acquired them over the years before the LCC’s such as AirTran were in existence.
Today the legacy carriers use them regardless of whether the flights they operate are profitable or not just to keep them out of the other carrier’s possession, especially the LCC’s. I could go on about the unfairness of this forever, but I need to stay on point.
In operating the CAK-LGA flights AirTran had been using a set of slots that they owned for two of the flights and the third flight was being operated with a set of slots that were being loaned to AirTran by United Airlines, who was not using the slots at the time. Under the slot laws a carrier who does not use their slots may loan them to another carrier who can then use them but the carrier who loans them still owns them. In the current case, United no longer wished to loan the slots to AirTran therefore AirTran no longer had the right to fly the 3rd flight.
Can we get it back? Who knows! Currently the FAA is looking at re-licensing the slots to LaGuardia using new formula but it remains very murky as to what the outcome will be.
With respect to Boston, AirTran has gone from 2 flights to 1 flight, just for the winter season. This was a schedule mutually agreed upon by the airport and AirTran due to the tremendous drop off of passengers in the winter months to Boston. Passenger traffic drops off almost two-thirds from summer to winter in this particular market. Therefore the reduction from 2 to 1. Look for the 2nd flight to return in the spring.
