WT: Here is a hypothetical: Suppose that Delta, Allegiant, Frontier and jetBlue all wanted to schedule about 20 daily departures from DAL. Further, suppose that WN has scheduled about 155 departures, and suppose that UA and VX both schedule 16-20 departures.
What would you propose DAL do to provide access at DAL? At any other airport, the obvious solution would be to build more gates. That's not possible at DAL, because Congress decreed that DAL shall have no more than 20 gates. Would you propose that DAL somehow take or confiscate eight of WN's 16 gates? That's not possible under the WN lease.
So you're the judge hearing the DL lawsuit. What remedy would you order to permit those four new entrants to fly their 80 daily departures?
DL strongly encouraged DAL to have common use gates instead of giving both gates to VX.
DAL chose not to.
whether legal based on the 5 party agreement or not, there would be little difficulty in convincing a judge or Congress that allowing DAL which could easily have as many daily seats as TPA to be carved up between 3 airlines with one of them having 80% of the gates and even more seats (the seats on UA's flights can fit on 3 WN 738s) is not only severely anticompetitive and against US antitrust laws but also a violation of US airport access laws whether the 5 party agreement incorporated it or not.
again, it was illegal for blacks to sit in the front of the bus at one time; those laws were thankfully overturned.
to think that just because something is in the law today makes it defensible is simply insupportable based on the US justice system.
Southwest likely gave in temporarily because it is afraid of an antitrust suit, and while its lawyers work out whether an antitrust suit would have merit/succeed, it is letting Delta stick around.
Hopefully an antitrust suit is filed and Love Field is open to all with gate restrictions eliminated.
and you and I completely agree with this.
a few WN fan kids might want not to hear that but their company does not.
WN is smart enough to know that having a large operation in a city where they can have the majority of seats is fine but to not allow full competition from anyone who wants to come is a recipe for a lawsuit.
DL so far is operating just 5, not 6 flights as they originally said.
There is clearly a minimum level of service that DL is willing to accept and I suspect it is close to flight and seat parity with WN in the primary DL hub markets that WN serves from DAL. Only DL knows the threshold it is willing to accept as acceptable service before it pushes a lawsuit.
DAL should be accessible to any carrier that wants to serve it.
Were it not for AA's merger settlement, they should be allowed to serve DAL as they wish as well.
all of the current elements of the 5 party agreement other than maximum airport size are likely not defensible on antitrust grounds.
WN is smart enough to give DL a few crumbs to keep a case out of court.
further, if UA is operating 12 flights/day just to squat gates, the chances are high that they will not sustain it based on market performance. their schedules apparently also do not meet DAL gate usage requirements for a maximum of 60 minutes per flight/gate which DAL could and should enforce.
DL will remain at DAL or there is a very good chance a case will be filed.
WN has the most to lose if a case is filed and has the least to lose by giving DL a little bit of gate space while WN leans on DAL to fix the problem with where it should be fixed - UA.