because they say it gives increased control in the biggest airline market in the world to American, by several measures the world’s largest carrier.
The rights to slots at JFK and a handful of other highly competitive airports are overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration and are rarely transferred as airlines fight to keep slots even in downtimes. Slots are the right to operate at a gate for a period of time. American has the third most slots at JFK, 212 as of this summer. Delta has 405 and JetBlue has 334,American Airlines has cited JetBlue’s access to the New York market as a basis for forging the partnership.
Earlier in the day, Spirit networking executive John Kirby testified that “competition is harmed by this combination.” But in 2019, the FAA approached American Airlines and told the airline it had been using only about 200 of the 216 slots it had been assigned at the time. American, Raja said, only thought that it had about 200.
But Raja said it was bad counting, not malicious intent, that kept American from adding more flights at JFK.“An unintentional one for the worst of reasons because we didn’t count right,” Raja replied.“As we were putting the airlines together, the schedule processes of these two things were not always lined up,” Raja said. “They were just not great business processes, and that drove a lot more of the underutilization than anything else.