Start-up airline Virgin America is hardly alone among the 'smaller' carriers in wanting to gain a foothold at Kennedy Airport.
In an announcement earlier this week, AirTran, Spirit Airlines, Sun Country, ATA Airlines, and MAXJet joined together to express their desire to join the major carriers in operating at Kennedy.
"If the U.S. had been relying on the big airlines' trade associations to allocate scarce capacity, there wouldn't be an AirTran, JetBlue, Spirit, Frontier or Virgin America, and consumers would not see our product innovations and low fares," Fred Reid,
chief executive officer of Virgin America, said in a statement. Virgin America already has eight daily flights from California to Kennedy, but it seeking more.
AirTran's CEO, Bob Fornaro, said, "The (DOT) has done a great job fostering new airline competition, so we're hopeful they won't buy the largest airlines' latest attempt to close the door to new low-fare service."
Bill Stockbridge, CEO of MAXJet, was more blunt than most: "We understand why larger airlines would not want to grant us access to important airports like JFK," he said. "The better question is why they think the (DOT), which is interested in promoting and preserving competition, would listen to this nonsense."
There's no word yet whether the DOT considers the major airlines' argument against allowing smaller carriers more access to JFK is nonsense or not. For that, we'll have to wait a few weeks, possibly until the new year, to find out what solutions the DOT thinks are best for airline-traffic clogged Kennedy. The major carriers think Kennedy is already too crowded and that
letting in smaller carriers would only make the situation worse.
And whatever the DOT decides, the real test will come next summer, when air travel from Kennedy is expected to be heavier still.
-- JAMES BERNSTEIN