Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport

Say that five times as fast as you can.  Today has certainly been interesting and as it draws to a close, CHO still doesn’t know how the Delta/US Airways friendly slot & facilities swap at New York LaGuardia (LGA) will impact its service.  What are slots?  LGA is a slot-controlled airport, meaning that a commercial airline must have a slot (from capped or limited capacity) for each take off and landing between the hours of 7:00 am and 9:59 p.m.  No slot, no flight between those hours. 

The announcement indicates that US Airways will gain slots from Delta at Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) as well as rights to service to and from both Brazil and Japan.  Delta intends to make LGA its newest domestic hub, gaining 125 US Airways Express slots.  US Airways will keep 72 peak hour slots, maintaining its status as the third largest carrier at LGA, at least for now.

In addition to this swap announcement, AirTran Airways announced that it will stop flying to and from Newark, NJ (EWR) and trade its slots to Continental Airlines for Continental’s slots at DCA and LGA.  AirTran will receive four slots at LGA and six at DCA, or 2 daily flights and 3 daily flights respectively.

This follows Southwest Airlines' commencement of LGA service in June, after purchasing now-defunct ATA’s 14 slots through bankruptcy proceedings.  Through negotiations, Southwest turned 7 daily peak hour flights into 8 flights spread throughout the day overlapping non-controlled hours.  Southwest is now bidding for bankrupt Frontier Airlines, which, in addition to eliminating one of its primary competitors at Denver, will give it Frontier’s Atlanta (ATL) assets where Southwest does not currently offer service,and where AirTran and Delta currently maintain hubs.

This pattern of competition between Delta-AirTran-Southwest has emerged at two of the nation’s most congested airports, despite delays of up to 2.5 hours, not uncommon at LGA for weather or capacity-related issues.  For example, a tweet (www.twitter.com) today from  @FltAdvisor states:  “LGA Departure flight delays due to TM Initiatives:SWAP, averaging 2 hours and 16 minutes to 2 hours and 30 minutes, Increasing ...”.  As defined by FAA (www.faa.gov), a traffic management (tm) SWAP is a “Severe Weather Avoidance Plan. An approved plan to minimize the effect of severe weather on traffic flows in impacted terminal and/or ARTCC areas. SWAP is normally implemented to provide the least disruption to the ATC system when flight through portions of airspace is difficult or impossible due to severe weather.”  For CHO, the result can be tremendous.  LGA remains its top market, generating more passenger traffic and airline revenue than any other destination, direct or not.