dayone

"'We’re keeping both for sure. We love Love Field," said Alaska president and Virgin America CEO Ben Minicucci.

AS Will Keep Gates at Dallas Airport Dominated by Southwest

The two gates at space-constrained DAL are some of the most valuable real estate in the U.S. aviation industry. VX acquired the two gates from AA in 2014 when the Fort Worth-based carrier was forced to give them up as a condition of its merger with US.

Fanjet

I think they will be better off dumping the DAL-LGA service and selling those LGA slots for cash or a trade of JFK slots. The DCA-DAL (IIRC 3 slot pairs) have a bit more potential, as they might be able to trade them out for beyond-perimeter service in the future. It has been done once in the past. And then concentrate their service at DAL to their hubs/focus cities on the west coast.

dayone

Per the merger terms, the slots are restricted and any sale or trade requires regulatory approval.

DAL-LGA/DCA are very viable routes and markets. And SEA-DAL will likely be added in the next year or so.

eponymous_coward

I doubt they can just sell LGA slots to whoever they want willy-nilly.

https://www.virginamerica.com/cms/ab...n-at-laguardia

It would be extremely irresponsible to allow a carrier who dominates LGA like AA or DL to have access to more slots when the entire point of the transaction was to have a non-dominant carrier get access to LGA (AS and VX are about as non-dominant at LGA as you can get). It would also be irresponsible to allow AS to sell to, say, WN, allowing them to dominate the DAL-LGA market. Once you eliminate AA/DL/UA/WN... who's left? B6? (I can't imagine NK or G4 are going to be interested.)

Having a portfolio at all three NYC airports (even if it's not a big one at any one of them) isn't that bad of an idea.

Sounds about right. The DOJ isn't stupid.

I would imagine a portfolio of DAL-SEA/LAX/SFO/DCA/LGA to be pretty reasonable. I'm a touch more skeptical about the 1xLAS frequency (which is already down some from before). It wouldn't shock me to see AS resume LAX/SFO-DFW service, either, given their history of flying to multiple markets in Greater LA, Greater NYC and the Bay Area, and the fact that they can't put their code on AA flights. Since they already have a station at DFW, might as well use it...

PV_Premier

the LGA perimeter restriction makes it a little less compelling for an airline that has declared they want to be the airline of the west coast.

i have got to imagine UA might be interested in more ops at LGA if they could get those slots. of course, they aren't going to give up anything at EWR to get them, and that could very well end up being a requirement of that type of transaction.

will be interesting to see what happens.

Dieuwer

The DAL, LGA slots could be used differently. Instead of lying one DAL-LGA, AS could do one SAN-LGA and one SAN-DAL. Or SAN-LGA plus SEA-DAL. Or whatever combination.

dmodemd

I vote (pray) for SEA-DAL.

mbluecpa

SAN-LGA won't work (except maybe on Saturday?) because of the LGA perimeter rule.

SJC ORD LDR

OTOH, AA and/or DL will serve smaller cites from LGA that no one else will serve. Adding WN or another LCC/ULCC will only add service to a route that already has service. While it makes for lower fares from those city pairs, it doesn't help those living away from major markets.

sfozrhfco

Not necessarily true. AA/DL are more likely to just add more frequency to an existing route/hub. AA/DL won't get the slots regardless of what happens so that point is moot anyway.

eponymous_coward

By that logic, it would make the most sense to allow one airline to use all slots of a slot-restricted airport, since that would allow the most possible non-duplicative routes.

That isn't particularly convincing logic, unless you think giving a single airline monopoly access to an airport is going to yield good pricing and outcomes for people wanting to fly to that airport.

PS: DL and AA don't serve DAL-LGA. Are you saying customers would be better served with a WN monopoly on DAL-LGA flying than by having two competing airlines on the route?

SJC ORD LDR

It's also true that AA/DL are more likely to serve a small city than anyone else. Both are true.

IMO, I'm not a fan of slots, though I know they are a necessary evil. But, I really think the perimeter restrictions for DCA and LGA should be ditched. It's one thing to not offer a customs facility, but it's another to artificially limit how far a plane can fly. This would help AS more since they could fly LGA/DCA-SEA/PDX/SFO/LAX/SAN.

eponymous_coward

They serve every one of those cities nonstop out of DCA save for SAN (and in theory they could take one of their slots and switch to SAN similar to what DL did for turning DCA-SLC into DCA-LAX).

I'm not sure that DCA has massive, unmet transcon demand. It's pretty well connected to most major West Coast markets.

LGA is trickier because of slot restrictions, but yeah, the perimeter rule is ridiculous.

UAPremierExec

i can see Alaska adding DAL to SEA, SAN, MCO, and BOS. they have a bit of room to add some flights and operate DAL as a minihub.

formeraa

But, remember, AS/VX only has TWO gates at DAL. So, the "mini-hub" concept is limited to two flights in/two flights out at one time.