United Threatens to pull out of JFK

 My apologies, Real life got in the way again....Between work and sleep, Next week I am hoping that it will ease up next week, I am in school net week and on day shift, I will 'splain the class details next week.  I got this from my email from a 3rd party report I get.

I'm not sure what to make of this unless the FAA(Friends Against Aviation) to appease United, they  strips some slots from another carrier, so it remains to be seen what they do here.  JFK is more international and LGA(Laguardia) is mostly domestic so I am not sure how heavy and how much international traffic United actually gets from the International routes.  Remember we in the United States don't have a "National Carrier" or a flag carrier unlike other countries, the flag carrier gets preferential treatment from their home country from gate assignments and fees and other things.  The closest we ever had to a flag carrier was "Pan-Am"

Credit: Karin Pezo / Alamy Stock Photo

United Airlines said it will permanently exit New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) by the end of October, unless the FAA offers up additional slot pairs at the crowded airport.

United’s current JFK service consists of just four daily flights—two transcon routes per day to both Los Angeles International (LAX) and San Francisco International (SFO), according to a spokeswoman. The company was able to obtain some additional slots on an interim basis from other carriers after resuming service in February 2021 but has since returned those slots as demand surged back to pre-crisis levels.

Since resuming JFK service, the Chicago-based carrier has made “repeated requests” to the FAA for additional permanent slots, while also pursuing commercial agreements to acquire slots from other airlines, but its efforts have all been unsuccessful, CEO Scott Kirby wrote in a Sept. 6 letter to employees, viewed by Aviation Daily. 

Now, the airline is making a last-ditch effort to secure an interim multi-season slot allocation from the FAA, outlined in a separate letter sent by Kirby to Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen last week.

If that request is granted, Kirby said United is “prepared to expand” its service at JFK. But if the carrier cannot secure additional allocations for multiple seasons, it will need to suspend service at the airport by the end of October, he warned.

“That would obviously be a tough and frustrating step to take and one that we have worked really hard to prevent,” Kirby wrote.

JFK has four runways—consisting of two pairs of parallel runways—with the ability to shift between two arrival or two departure runways to accommodate demand spikes, compared to three runways at Newark Liberty (EWR), Kirby noted. But despite having an extra runway, JFK’s capacity has remained capped at 81 runway movements per hour since 2008, just two more movements than EWR’s maximum of 79 per hour, Kirby noted. 

The United CEO lamented that JFK’s capacity caps have not been lifted in nearly 15 years despite substantial infrastructure improvements over that period, including “the widening of runways, construction of multi-entrance taxiways and the creation of aligned high-speed turnoffs.”

“A comparison to Newark makes it clear that there is additional capacity at JFK, especially given the airport’s current slot availability has not been reassessed since substantial improvements have been made to the airport,” Kirby wrote. “United believes it is in the traveling public’s best interest for the FAA to quantify and permanently allocate the unused capacity that exists at JFK.”

The FAA said in a statement that it “continually looks for ways to increase the efficiency of airspace in busy metropolitan areas safely,” and that any additional slot pairs at JFK must be “distributed fairly.” The agency also said it must “consider airspace capacity and runway capacity to assess how changes would affect flights at nearby airports” when making decisions about JFK’s capacity caps.

Airline consultant Bob Mann of R.W. Mann & Co. told Aviation Daily that United needs to increase its level of service at JFK in order to justify being there, otherwise “it really doesn’t make economic sense” to maintain a presence with just a couple routes. But he also called it “galling” that United is complaining about lack of capacity at JFK, while at the same time urging the FAA to further reduce capacity at its main Northeastern hub in Newark.

“It’s kind of ironic how they’re complaining about the few operations that JetBlue and Spirit have in Newark ... and here they are saying they need more unavailable slots at JFK where it’s already congested,” Mann said.