PIT power over tenant airlines?

[Rob]

When UAL pulled the plug on CLE (at least the airport was paid for at that point) they refused to give up the leases on their gates and other facilities, keeping competition out for about 5 years.

Hopefully a lot of airports learned from that experience. Does PIT have rights to recapture underutilized facilities from its tenants? Anybody know?

 

[RowUnderDCA]

The short answer is that whatever agreements U had with ACAA have been abrogated (unless overturned in court- but my reading of ACAA's action is not a move to overturn the abbrogation.) and so, it doesn't really matter what rights U had under those agreements. I wonder what kind of bankruptcy provisions, or lease provisions, are allowing U to maintain occupancy of gates when they've abbrogated the lease. Since they are still paying the former payments, maybe it just continues month-to-month??

Considering the fact that ACAA is under new Federal obligations to protect competition (that did not exist at the time that they entered into the lease with U), I'd suspect that whatever 'new' deal the parties enter into will NOT include the ability of U to 'horde' gates. But, I don't know.