Seeking a Place at Airports

MERV

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Oct 29, 2009
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JFK Aiport NYC
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New LCC and start up are find it hard to get access to major airports. The big carriers are holding their slots and gates out those carriers reach. If i think like a customer it sucks but as employee do whatever you can to prevent them entering service those cities. In NYC area that doesn't count that's where I live.

Virgin America has managed to survive skyrocketing oil prices and an economic crisis since it started in mid-2007 and even hopes to achieve an operating profit this year.But the airline, based in San Francisco, still faces the same hurdle that has daunted previous start-ups: getting access to scarce runway slots and terminal gates at some of the nation’s biggest and busiest airports.

“We’ve been told at Newark that we can’t get in, and we’ve been told at J.F.K. that we can’t expand,†David Cush, Virgin America’s chief executive, said, referring to negotiations with the Federal Aviation Administration, which has limited flight operations at both airports to ease delays.

Even if an airline can gain access to runway slots at appealing times, it must negotiate the right to use an airport’s gates, which are typically controlled by the airport authority and airlines that have long-term leases. Established airlines have been reluctant to sublease their gates to low-fare competitors. Or, if they do, they demand high rents, which is why airlines like Southwest have gravitated toward secondary airports like Chicago Midway instead of O’Hare International Airport.

Seeking a Place at Airports
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/business...3mq67aQx51bp1HA
 
New LCC and start up are find it hard to get access to major airports.

The problem isn't with "major airports" in general - the two that Virgin America wants access to (or more access to) aren't the busiest measured by either passengers or flight ops - that'd be ATL, ORD - or the largest measured by land area, number of runways, or whatever -that'd be DEN/DFW. It's that Virgin America wants access or more access to two of the 3 most congested delay prone airports in the country, which are already operating under FAA imposed capacity restraint and the carriers operating at JFK are hoping for the best but expecting the worst with the upcoming 4 month closure of the primary runway.

Jim