It’s really interesting to watch US Airways as it starts to announce how it’s going to use its newly acquired slots at Washington’s National Airport. While Delta made a huge splash in New York with its hub-creation at LaGuardia after it got the US Airways slots there, US Airways has gone with a softer launch with the Delta slots it acquired at National. That’s quite fitting.

Unlike Delta, US Airways is going with a phased introduction of new flights. Of the 42 slot pairs that it’s getting from Delta, it looks like it’s only announcing what will happen with 26 of them. I’m told by the airline that more will be announced in February. Meanwhile, Delta has already shown which flights will be getting the axe, so we have a pretty good picture of what’s happening. Here it is.

Now, I pulled all this up by hand, so there could be a couple of issues with the number of frequencies in some of these markets, but you get the idea. I’ve highlighted the most interesting ones to me in green.

As expected, Delta is pulling out of every market save for its hubs with one little exception. Want to guess which one that is? It’s Lexington, Kentucky, where it appears Delta will continue to have 1 daily flight on a CRJ. Why? I have no clue. Maybe there’s something special about that particular slot which will keep Delta serving that market, or maybe it was just an oversight and will be removed shortly. Regardless, other than that, there are no other non-hub flights for Delta.

That includes the ditching of all flights between Boston and Washington/National, a market which has probably suffered greatly with JetBlue in there. There’s plenty of room for US Airways and JetBlue in there, but it was probably a little too crowded with Delta anyway. There’s also a noticeable reduction in flights to JFK. I assume that’s because Delta is really trying to shift domestic flying over to LaGuardia. It doesn’t need as many flights to JFK anymore.

But let’s get to the meat of this story. What is US Airways doing? It is not following Delta by ramping up service in larger markets. Instead, it’s really serving some of the little guys out there. Look for flights to Fayetteville and Jacksonville . . . North Carolina. There will also be service to Ft Walton Beach, Pensacola, and Tallahassee in Florida. These are cities that have been begging for service to the nation’s capital and now they’re getting it. I imagine a lot of this is actually military traffic, come to think of it.

The upshot here is that US Airways is really bringing some great new service to smaller cities, a rarity today. That does mean that some of the cities Delta abandons will truly suffer. Des Moines and Jackson (MS) are the big losers here; they lose their only nonstop to National when Delta pulls out. Unless US Airways adds them in the next round of flights announcements, they’re out of luck.

Mid-sized cities Charleston (SC), Columbus (OH), Jacksonville (FL), New Orleans, Providence, and Tampa will all keep the US Airways service they have today, but they won’t get more flights. They will, however, be losing Delta as nonstop competition. That’s bound to impact fares to some extent. Grand Rapids and Madison are losing Delta as well, but they have new service from Frontier coming in just in time. That actually might turn out to do alright.

It’s funny to see big cities like Miami lose Delta service but not get US Airways in return. That’s probably a smart move on the part of US Airways. The airline doesn’t want to serve every big city from National. It wants to serve every city it can serve profitably. The high costs and massive frequency and loyalty advantage held by American in Miami probably make it worth avoiding.

But what will the next round of adds bring for US Airways? Great question. I would assume that the airline wanted to add the routes it thought had the most potential first, but there could be more in the next round that will surprise. Maybe we’ll even see some summer seasonal stuff, I don’t know. Either way, it seems to be a very methodical process for the airline, somewhat different from Delta in New York.

With Delta, it seems like it has an idea about which cities need to be served from New York in order to “win” the town. The airline made the flashy announcement so it could make its mark. For US Airways, however, it’s really a market-by-market decision based on viability, with no effort to “win” a city. Not quite as flashy, but it gives great insight into the amount of demand to different cities from Washington.

I look forward to seeing what’s next.

Remember that whole Delta/US Airways slot swap deal? US Airways gave most of its slots at New York’s La Guardia airport to Delta in exchange for most of Delta’s slots at Washington’s National Airport along with a couple of other considerations. As part of that, Delta had to put 24 slot pairs up to auction for new entrants. That happened last week, and now, we know the winners . . . sort of.

At La Guardia, there were two bundles of 8 slot pairs being auctioned off. That means that two airlines will get the right to operate 8 takeoffs and 8 landings per day at good times. The bidders had to be either new entrants or airlines with very small presences at the airport already. One of the winners has been officially announced . . . WestJet.

That’s right. Those crazy Canucks are swooping in to fly 8 daily trips to La Guardia. It’s not a surprise that WestJet was interested. The rumors were that WestJet’s proposed partnership with Southwest ended over something closely related to La Guardia. See, WestJet wanted to be able to partner with multiple airlines in order to help feed its network. This was important at La Guardia, where Southwest couldn’t add much. Southwest supposedly didn’t want to see WestJet partner with anyone else. The partnership ended so that WestJet would be free to pursue a life of religious fulfillment, er, um, multiple partnerships.

Earlier this year, Delta launched an interline partnership with WestJet. I imagine we might see it get a little cozier now that Delta will have so many flights that could feed WestJet. Someone is going to need to fill those 8 flights, most if not all of which are undoubtedly bound for Toronto.

But what about the other eight? That’s a bit more of a mystery. Though it hasn’t officially been announced, Bloomberg reports that JetBlue won that bid. It also is said to have picked up the 8 slot pairs down at Washington/National as well. That’s a big win for the Blue Crew.

JetBlue’s interest should be no surprise. It already runs just shy of a dozen daily flights out of La Guardia to Ft Lauderdale, Orlando, and West Palm Beach. At National, it has nine with flights to Boston, Ft Lauderdale, and Orlando. This will help the airline expand its reach at those airports with a nice chunk of new slots.

So is anything surprising about this whole thing? You bet. The most surprising thing is that Southwest didn’t win anything. It has a gajillion* dollars in the bank (*rough estimate) and certainly could have outbid anyone if it wanted. It has made serving big cities a priority lately as a way to get its customers wherever they need to go in the US.

Southwest fought its way into La Guardia when it got 8 slot pairs there to start flights to Baltimore and Chicago. It gained more when it acquired AirTran, which has about 20 slot pairs. It acquired its first beachhead at National with AirTran’s 12 slots there. So you would think it would have been hungry for more, and in fact, it has expressed great interest in the past. It just somehow got outbid this time.

So, Southwest fans won’t be thrilled, but JetBlue lovers should be. There will be more JetBlue flights coming soon, assuming the deal gets done. And Canadians can rejoice that they will have another option to get to New York.

Now we just have to wait for all the “i’s” to be dotted and “t’s” crossed. Oh yeah, and we’re still waiting for final governmental approval in a couple areas. But things are starting to shape up nicely.

If you want to follow this closely, head on over to Things in the Sky. Dan Webb is keeping a close eye on this.

[Original photo via Flickr user Bob n Renee/CC 2.0]

After years of back and forth, the Department of Transportation has finally decided to do the right thing and let US Airways trade a host of slots at New York’s La Guardia for a bunch of Delta’s slots at Washington National Airport. This swap is not a simple transaction. There are a lot of logistics behind it, and it took major creativity and commitment from both parties to make something like this work. Hopefully American is taking notice. And I say that not because Delta has made a move that will once again hurt American in New York, but rather because American needs to get off its butt and start doing some bold things like this to fix its business.

After last week’s post on American’s decision to order 460 new airplanes, I had some great offline conversations with people about it. I still stand by my belief that it was a good move. I have no doubt American beat up the manufacturers to get a great deal, and it will certainly help to lower operating costs when the airplanes start coming in, probably at little to no additional cost to American. But that doesn’t mean that American’s problems are solved. If American thinks this is the solution, and I really can’t imagine that’s the case, then the airline is screwed. This doesn’t touch American’s revenue problems at all.

The news that Delta and US Airways received approval of the slot swap provids a great contrast between Delta/US Airways and American. Delta and US Airways have been very proactive at doing the right thing and improving their respective businesses. For US Airways, it’s been all about focusing the business on reliability, convenience, and appearance while re-forming the route network to fit its strengths. US Airways shut down the money-losing Vegas operation. It got rid of all the non-hub flying on the east coast that was a drain. It cleaned up its airplanes, and focused on on time performance. And now, it’s ditched its turboprop-based hub at La Guardia in favor of strengthening its position at Washington’s National Airport where it’s a much stronger player and can draw better revenue.

For Delta, the change has been no less significant. It has pulled down flying at minor hubs like Cincinnati and more recently Memphis. It’s parking smaller airplanes and cutting service to small cities that simply aren’t profitable. The airline built up a more comprehensive premium product and has worked on setting product standards from its 70 seaters on up. It has positioned itself as a technology leader in a variety of ways, and it has worked hard to improve the airport experience. Now, it can trade its Washington position in order to strengthen its already strong capabilities in New York.

For both US Airways and Delta, this is yet another effort to play to their strengths, and it’s going to provide a great deal of benefit to both. Let’s contrast that with American.

Instead of doing hard work on its own, American is relying on partners to fix its problems. It has put its eggs in the joint venture basket – saying that its partnerships with British Airways/Iberia as well as with Japan Air Lines will spike revenues. It’s built up a partnership with JetBlue to feed its flights in New York and Boston. That’s nice, but it doesn’t fix the structural problems. It’s just a patch.

If you didn’t see the investor report issued by Bob McAdoo back in May, then you missed out on a scathing review. Bob noted some very simple things, like the fact that American’s 10 worst routes lose about $450 million a year, more now that oil has spiked. He uses Chicago to London as an example. American gets a much lower fare than United but it flies larger airplanes and has more frequencies. The same goes from JFK to LA and San Francisco. The average fare to LA has dropped over $100 since 2000 but the level of service stays the same, losing money all along the way.

Instead of addressing these big problems, American pokes around the edges. Sure, it made some moves, like slowly killing the San Juan hub, and cutting some vestigial flying, but it’s been mostly minor changes. It stops flying routes like San Francisco to Honolulu and starts flying to Helsinki and calls that a strategy. (This week, it’s building up Ft Lauderdale a little. Woohoo.) It has its cornerstone strategy of focusing on LA, Dallas, Chicago, New York, and Miami. That’s fine. But instead of just culling service around those cities, it seems the problem is how American serves those cities in the first place, at least that’s what the McAdoo report makes very clear. Then there’s New York. Delta has made huge strides in New York, and it will now have a ton of new service from La Guardia to offer up to its corporate clients. American stands still.

It’s not just the route network but the onboard product as well. The most glaring deficiency is that American is the only long haul domestic airline without a plan for flat beds in business class. It rolled out its substandard business class about the time United went fully flat, so it was obsolete from the start, and nothing has changed. Even US Airways has been actively rolling out flat beds.

Even when American has been a leader, it’s quickly fallen behind. It was an early adopter of gogo inflight internet, but it only put it on a limited portion of the fleet. While Delta put it everywhere, American stuttered and is only now catching up. Hopefully some of its more forward-thinking moves, like working on streaming video with gogo will actually go past the testing stage and give the airline a leadership position in . . . something.

I’m sure many of you will say a merger is the answer, but it’s most definitely not. American’s costs are higher than any potential merger partner, so it would effectively kill an airline that works well today on its own. The math becomes 1+1=0.5 if they were to do an ill-advised combo. So the weight falls squarely on American to do the hard work. It has spent a lot of time raising cash, but it keeps losing money while others profit. Instead of slowly bleeding cash, American needs to invest that money into fixing its problems.

The airline might want to take a hint from its partner Qantas, which is about to make some major changes on August 24 in order to get its house in order. Will these be popular? Not all, but that’s not the point. The point is turning the business around at all costs.

Get bold, American. Do something to get those revenues jumping.

Delta and US Airways are hoping that the third time’s a charm by putting the long-proposed slot swap in New York and Washington back on the table with some slight modifications. This time, I have to believe that it’s going to go through. They wouldn’t bother putting this out there if it was going to fail once again.

Here’s the plan this time around:

US Airways no longer wants the Japan slots it had wanted before, mostly because there is now an open skies agreement between the two countries and it doesn’t need to buy them. It also will no longer give up its terminal location in LaGuardia as before. Delta will get a few more slots in the deal, and US Airways gets a bunch of cash. Here’s the full rundown depending upon where you live:

For Washingtonians

• Delta will give 42 slot pairs (1 slot pair = 1 departure + 1 arrival) to US Airways at National and US Airways will begin service to at least 15 new destinations. Back when US Airways first announced it would do this deal in 2009, it gave 15 new destinations it would serve, so I imagine it will be similar.
• Delta will continue to serve its 7 (!) domestic hubs from National – which I assume are New York/JFK, Atlanta, Memphis, Detroit, Minneapolis/St Paul, Cincinnati, and Salt Lake City along with the shuttle to LaGuardia and some “select” cities, whatever that means. Delta never gave us any inkling before, so we can only guess now.
• This is pure speculation, but I would assume that US Airways will acquire more gates on the middle pier at National which would allow United to move to some old Delta gates on the south pier to be right next to Continental.
• If needed, Delta will give an additional 8 slot pairs to be divested for use by airlines with limited or no service at National. US Airways would still end up with 42 new slot pairs regardless. I assume the feds will make this a requirement.

For New Yorkers

• Delta will get a whopping 132 new slot pairs (up from the 125 in the first dealin the last deal, Delta would buy 125 but lease another 15 with the option to buy, so this is actually a decrease) at LaGuardia. We have no clue where they’ll go, but we can expect to see Delta replace US Airways on many of the airline’s current routes. Delta also says it will double the number of total destinations it serves, including some that aren’t currently served by US Airways.
• Delta will use an all-jet fleet at LaGuardia instead of the turboprops that US Airways currently uses. Wanna guess where those jets are coming from? My guess is the obvious. (*cough*Memphis*cough*Cincinnati*cough*)
• US Airways will give up 18 of the 20 gates in its terminal at LaGuardia (called Terminal C) to Delta. Delta will use those plus 11 in its current terminal (now Terminal D) for 29 in total. Delta will then build a connector between the two terminals so that it can operate as a single terminal from a passenger perspective. (They aren’t physically connected now.)
• Delta will continue to run the Shuttle from LaGuardia to Boston and Washington from six gates in the Marine Air Terminal, which is a change from the previous plan to consolidate in one place.
• US Airways will still have two gates in LaGuardia’s Terminal C along with 7 other parking spots from where it will run its operation have 6 gates once the terminal is reconfigured to add more spots plus 3 parking positions for regional jets. It will continue to have the Shuttle to Washington and Boston along with flights to Philly, Charlotte, and Pittsburgh but that’s it. The previous plan to keep Wilmington (who knows why) won’t happen.
• Delta will take over the current US Airways Club at LaGuardia in Terminal C and turn it into a Sky Club to complement the existing club in Terminal D. US Airways will build a new, smaller lounge for its operation.
• Delta (not US Airways) will give up 16 slot pairs at LaGuardia to new entrants if needed, and you can bet that will be the case.

On top of all this, US Airways will get a slot to fly to Sao Paulo in 2015, which is on top of another slot it already has acquired on its own. As mentioned above, the Tokyo slot that was previously included is gone since Japan and the US now have open skies. To make everything work out after these changes, Delta will drop $66.5 million into a US Airways bank account.

So why do I say this is a done deal? Because it has to be. US Airways and Delta had filed an appeal in the courts to force the feds to allow this to happen. As part of this new deal, the airlines are dropping the appeal. There has to have been a lot of backroom bargaining here. The feds must have given the green light behind the scenes or these airlines wouldn’t have bothered making another proposal. To me, the only question is who will get those divested slots and will the full amount be required.

As Delta and US Airways both make clear, things have changed a lot since the swap was first proposed nearly two years ago. Southwest has gone into LaGuardia on its own and its purchase of AirTran gives it more slots there as well as some at National for the first time. JetBlue has found its own way into National as well. So there is a lot more low cost airline penetration and connectivity to the rest of the country. It should be enough.

I’m actually surprised that Delta is willing to pony up 24 slots just to appease the feds here. But Delta has been foaming at the mouth around cementing its role in New York and this would be a huge step forward. It would also be a major slap at American. The new United and Delta will be the two biggest players in the New York area and American will have to figure out how it wants to respond, if it does at all.

I still like this swap a lot, and I think it should have been approved two years ago. Let’s hope that this is effectively a done deal at this point.

Updated 5/26 @ 1009a to reflect that I forgot about the previous deal to lease 15 slots to Delta at LaGuardia. Also received clarification from US Airways that the terminal will be reconfigured and it will still have 6 gates plus 3 parking positions at LaGuardia.

Last month when I flew in and out of Washington National Airport, it brought back a lot of memories. The airport has changed a great deal since I first arrived for college in 1995, but the beauty of the airport is that it doesn’t cover up its history. If you have the chance to walk around, you can still experience all 70 years of the airport in its full glory. There aren’t many airports that embrace history like National does.

Here’s how National looks today from above. Well, it’s how it would look if I could draw all over the airport. (North is to the left.)

What you see is the three terminals that exist today. Well, it’s sort of three terminals. In fact, that’s my one complaint about the airport. Breaking up the new terminal into B and C is weird, because there are actually three concourses with separate security entrances. I still don’t know why they didn’t break it into terminals B, C, and D.

But this new terminal sits on top of what was the North Terminal, built in 1958. That terminal wasn’t anything special, and when the chance came to raze it, they did. This terminal, however, is an incredibly beautiful building that is also highly functional. Here’s a view from the main walkway outside security. The ceiling is made of Jeffersonian domes that let in a ton of light. Ticketing is actually upstairs, but from this level, there is direct access to the Metro which takes you right into the heart of DC. It’s a very quick airport to use for travelers, but those who rush will miss the best parts.

When the North Terminal was razed, USAir and Delta ended up moving into the Interim Terminal, a converted hangar that was designed just to house the airlines until the work on the new terminal was done. It actually wasn’t a bad facility, considering, but once the new terminal opened, it went back to being a hangar and offices. In the picture at the top, you can see where the airplanes used to park.

If you keep going north, though you can’t see it here, you’ll come to Gravelly Point, a park on the edge of the Potomac where airplanes fly right overhead. When I was in school, 727s ruled this airport and there was nothing like seeing those big smoky beasts land. It’s a lot less thrilling now with mostly regionals, 737s, and Airbuses, but it’s still a great place to spend the day.

Back to the terminal. Take a walk toward the south and that’s where you get the real history. That long hallway in Terminal B opens up into the original terminal building that’s now called Terminal A. At the north end of the Terminal, you can go up steps into what I believe is still a history museum. I haven’t gone in there for awhile. Below that is where the United gates used to be, but any trace of those are long gone.

This room is the historic lobby that used to be the focus of the airport. That curved wall with pictures is now a visual history of the airport, and it’s worth stopping to take a look. Behind that wall used to be ticket counters for some of the storied carriers in US airline history. Up top, it used to be open as an observation deck where you could escape the insanity from down below. But now, you have to instead just enjoy the view from that main floor below instead. There are even some old chairs there for those want to sit and soak up the past for a little while. It’s now a shockingly quiet version of what it used to be, but the picture window simply can’t be beat for its view.

Part of what’s so great about this terminal is the attention to detail that you simply will not find today. For example, take a look at these doors that led out to the main ramp from the terminal.

Or how about this clock with ornate decoration below? Walking underneath this used to take passengers to the USAir Shuttle (and the Trump and Eastern Shuttles before that, I presume).

If you keep walking, you’ll go past what used to be a busy shopping area. It’s also where Travelers Aid used to be when I volunteered there during college. (We also had a location at baggage claim in the Interim Terminal.) But now it’s just a bunch of closed-facade offices. At the other end of that corridor, you walk into the old American Airlines section of the terminal.

This place is now JetBlue’s domain. The ticketing area is right across from the baggage claim, and behind the camera is where the original American concourse used to be. I believe Pan Am used to use it as well back in the day, but it was knocked down when the new terminal was built. I highlighted the footprint of where that used to be in gray in the top photo.

JetBlue now operates at the only active gates in the old terminal along with a bunch of other airlines that use the ticketing area next door that was originally built to go with those gates. The concourse, which is usually just called the Banjo, was built for TWA and Northwest.

The walk into the end of the Banjo where the gates are is a time warp. I remember there being an old gate along the way that went down to the TWExpress commuter airplanes. The end of the Banjo itself works fine, and I believe they’ve put some money into it to fix it up. I haven’t been down there since America West and Continental used to fly out of there.

It’s very easy to miss the history when you walk through this place, so I recommend grabbing a seat in the old main lobby for a few minutes and soaking it all in. The picture window is enough to grab your attention, but when you start noticing the details of the original building, it really hits home. This airport saw some of the most important political leaders in history fly through on a regular basis. It’s fantastic that the airport authority has put so much into keeping the history alive.