When Southwest Airlines announced in February that AirTran, which it bought last year, would stop flying out of Westchester County Airport in August, it blamed high fuel prices and the weak economy.
AirTran will stop flying into and out of Westchester County Airport in less than a month and so far no airlines have said they will take over those flight routes to Florida and Atlanta.
AirTran has five direct flights to and from the county airport daily ”“ three to Atlanta, one to Orlando and one to West Palm Beach. It served 300,000 of the almost 2 million passengers who used the airport in 2011.
On Oct, 2, the airport will hold its next quarterly lottery ”“ one was held July 10 ”“ for airlines to bid on the remaining passenger allocation in any half-hour time period.
“No more than 240 passengers per half- hour can be leaving or flying in to the airport,” said Patricia Chemka, deputy commissioner of the county”™s department of public works and transportation. “So, for instance, there may be a time when Delta is bringing in 120 passengers and no one else is operating. During a lottery someone else could elect to take the remaining allocation (of passengers) from 11 to 11:30 a.m. And airlines can make service adjustments between lotteries, if they think there”™s enough demand to start a new flight.”
In addition to AirTran, whose flights make up 10 percent of the total at the airport, the other passenger airlines at Westchester are Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, Cape Air, United Airlines, American Airlines and US Airways. Do any plan to bid for AirTran”™s routes?
Matt Miller, a spokesman for American Airlines and American Eagle, said the airline will maintain its service in Westchester and is not planning any changes. Its current service consists of flights to and from Chicago ”“ five daily Monday through Friday, two on Saturday and four on Sunday.
Jet Blue spokeswoman Allison Steinberg said in an email that the airline participated in the July lottery “and continues to seek opportunities to add capacity and keep fares low. ”¦We are committed to growing our service out of Westchester, but don”™t have specific information that we”™re able to share at this time.”
She did say that Jet Blue has turned to a larger aircraft, the Airbus A320, to handle the increase in daily traffic to Florida that will come as a result of AirTran”™s departure.
Trish Lorino, spokeswoman for Cape Air, said the airline flies only nine-passenger Cessna planes to Provincetown, Martha”™s Vineyard and Nantucket and has no plans to take over any other routes. It also flies within the Caribbean and within Florida, among other routes.
Calls to Delta, United and US Air were not answered as of press time.
Regardless of whether or when the slots are taken over, there will be a gap in service from Aug. 12 until the October lottery.
Chemka said that there is no deadline by which an airline must make known its intent to take part in a lottery. “Sometimes they show up to see what everybody else is doing. JetBlue might not want to make any changes but they want to see what Delta is doing.”
Chemka said that if an airline that does not currently fly at Westchester wanted to participate in the lottery, she would likely know about it in advance.
“Most of the time we would know if we get a brand new airline, they will want to know a lot about the airport, how much it costs to fly out of here, they”™d want to talk to the airport manager about doing business at Westchester County Airport. It”™s very rare that someone shows up out of the blue,” she said.
“There”™s a lot that goes into the decision-making of whether to establish flights here ”“ fees, baggage screening procedures, ground services, getting bags on and off the planes.”
She said if no one fills the AirTran slots, the airport will lose $1.7 million in operating revenue from August to December. That revenue comes from a per-head passenger fee that the airlines pay the county, as well as fuel sales.
But a report from the state Transportation Department issued last year showed that the airport had earnings in 2009, during the depths of the recession, of $334 million and provided more than 6,300 jobs. It was not among the airports that were hit harder by the recession than the national averages. It was one of only three airports in the state that gained enplanements, passengers flying in and out of the airport, along with Elmira/Corning Regional and Ithaca TompkinsRegional. Stewart International, along with Long Island”™s MacArthur Airport and LaGuardia were hit harder than the national average, with an average drop of almost 13 percent in passengers from 2007-2009.
“If nobody wants the routes then there will be fewer choices for passengers,” said Chemka. But she said she does not expect that to happen “because those flights have been full.”
