This week, United Airlines has announced that they will be reducing some of their daily flight frequencies in New York and Washington.
In this article we will go over the details surrounding as to why United has made this decision on reducing some of its flights around both New York and Washington D.C.
United Reduces NYC & Washington D.C.
[monsterinsights_popular_posts_inline]
Back on March 22, 2023, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) announced that they would grant airlines to have flexibility on their slot usage requirements in a bid to reduce air traffic around the two cities of New York and Washington D.C.
This flexibility would enable the airlines to maintain their required service levels to cope with the much-needed growing demand and also help the environment around both major U.S. cities.
As such, United is the first carrier to utilize this new ruling from the FAA with them reducing some of their daily flight frequencies on routes involving New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), and Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA).
The carrier has commented on this move, saying, “In support of the FAA’s efforts to reduce air traffic in the New York City area this summer, we’ve reduced some frequencies to our daily schedules at Newark, LaGuardia and Washington Reagan.”
“In many cases, we’ll replace the frequencies with larger aircraft to minimize the disruption to our customers’ travel plans. Even taking into account the small reductions, United will fly 5 percent more seats out of these airports than we did in summer 2019.”
“These small reductions will affect less than 2 percent of our customers at these airports – most of whom will still reach their destinations within two hours of their planned arrival time.”
So far United had already made schedule adjustments until the end of May, and over the next few weeks will adjust the remainder of their summer schedule. Noting into May specifically, United’s Newark Liberty (EWR) schedule has been reduced from 438 daily departures to 408.
Not only this, but their New York LaGuardia (LGA) to Washington Dulles (IAD) route has been reduced from nine to six daily departures, and their Newark Liberty (EWR) to Reagan National (DCA) route has been reduced to 10 daily departures from 18.
Overall
It will certainly be interesting to see how this new ruling pans out, especially as to what impact it may have on customers, however, with the mention of the airline operating larger aircraft to still help balance the much-needed demand, this should be easily manageable.
We wonder which other U.S. carriers will also jump on the new FAA ruling in reducing their frequencies across New York and Washington D.C.
