Opens Comment Period For Slot Auctions At JFK, EWR

In a wide-ranging Department of Transportation news release Friday, DOT Secretary Mary Peters announced three new measures addressing delays at the three major New York-area airports.

Peters announced DOT has posted the final order to temporarily cap scheduled flights at Newark Liberty Airport at an average of 83 per hour from June 1 until October 2009. She noted while the measure will spread flight schedules more evenly throughout the day, it still allows 30 operations per day above what was offered at the airport last summer.

Peters also said DOT will spend $2 million to study ways to add transit connections to New York’s Stewart Airport, about 90 miles north of Manhattan. She observed the facility has the runways and facilities to ease pressure at the region's major airports, if only passengers could get there more conveniently.

Finally, Peters announced DOT has opened a 60-day comment window on a plan for landing slots at JFK and Newark. The department proposes giving airlines already serving the airports up to 20 slots per day, and auctioning the rest over 10 years. After the decade of protection for existing airline investments ended, presumeably DOT would broaden the auction.

Peters said the airlines "...would receive a 10-year interest in some of the world’s most valuable aviation assets, free of charge, free of question and free of hassle."  She added that other airlines would get a chance to compete in an attractive aviation market, but to do so they would have to make investments that benefit every existing carrier.

We should be hearing the response from the Air Transport Association any moment now...

FMI: www.dot.gov