Auction Opens for Slots at New York and Washington Airports

The US Department of Transportation (DOT) opened a slot auction for airlines to request authority for take-off and landing slots at New York LaGuardia and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport this week. This is related to its decision to allow Delta Air Lines and US Airways to exchange some of their operating authorities at the two airports.

Last month the DOT approved a request by the carriers under which Delta would trade 42 daily slot pairs at Reagan National for 132 US Airways daily slot pairs at LaGuardia. The Department placed a number of conditions on the trade designed to promote competition and protect consumers, including a requirement that the carriers divest themselves of eight pairs of daily slots at Reagan National and 16 pairs at LaGuardia.

“The conditions we placed on the slot transfer, including the auction, will help airlines with little or no service at LaGuardia and Reagan National gain a competitive foothold at these airports,” said US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Only carriers operating less than five per cent of the slots at LaGuardia or Reagan National, either with their own aircraft or through a code-sharing agreement, will be eligible to bid for the divested slots at that airport, according to the DOT. In order to ensure that a purchaser will be able to provide meaningful new competition, all eight slot pairs at Reagan National will be sold in a single bundle, and the 16 pairs at LaGuardia will be sold in two bundles of eight slot pairs each.

The final deadline for bids is 17:00EST on November 22 and the DOT says they will be posted shortly after they are received on its website with information about which bundles are being bid upon and the bid amount, but not the carrier’s identity. On November 23, the Department will then notify the divesting carrier of the winning bidders, based on the highest bid and then payments arrangements for the slots will be finalised with the divesting carrier. As this article was placed online there had been no formal bids for the slots.