On October 7, 2011, the Department Of Transportation (“DOT”) and the Federal Aviation Administration (“FAA”) granted a joint waiver requested by Delta Air Lines (“Delta”) and US Airways (“US”) from the prohibition on purchasing operating authorizations (slots) at LaGuardia Airport (LGA). This waiver allowed DL to acquire 132 slot pairs from US at LGA and US to acquire 42 slot pairs from DL at DCA. Attached to the waiver were conditions that require Delta and US collectively to dispose of 16 slots at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) and 32 slots at LGA. Those divested slots will be reallocated in one slot bundle for DCA and two slot bundles (of 16 slots each) for LGA to eligible new entrant and limited incumbent carriers.
The new entrant and limited incumbent carriers may participate in the reallocation of slots at DCA and LGA under certain conditions. These carriers must have less than five percent of the total slot holdings at DCA or LGA, and may not codeshare to or from DCA or LGA with any carrier that has five percent or more of the total slot holdings. In addition, eligible participating carriers may not be subsidiaries, either partially or wholly owned, of a company whose combined slot holdings are equal to or greater than five percent of the total slot holdings at DCA or LGA respectively, with the exception of Frontier Airlines as noted in the Waiver.
The FAA requires that all eligible carriers that wish to participate in the reallocation process register as individual carriers between October 19 and October 28, 2011.
The bidding period will open at 9:00a.m., Eastern Time, on November 14, 2011, and it will close at 5:00p.m., Eastern Time, on November 22, 2011.
The FAA will construe the latest received bid as that bidder’s final bid.
For more information, or for assistance in preparing a bid, please contact Ronce Almond or Glenn Wicks by email or by phone at (202) 457-7790.