Southwest to buy ATA assets, get New York LaGuardia slots
 

By TERRY MAXON / The Dallas Morning News
[email protected]

Southwest Airlines Co. plans to buy ATA Airlines so it can obtain the bankrupt carrier’s operating slots at New York LaGuardia Airport, the airline confirmed Tuesday evening.

Southwest spokeswoman Beth Harbin said the airline intends to start service out of LaGuardia, assuming the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Indianapolis approves Southwest’s bid of $7.5 million.

“We’re working with ATA Airlines with the conditions and terms of the bid,” Ms. Harbin said. “The intent is not to operate ATA Airlines. The intent is to allow Southwest Airlines to acquire the LaGuardia slots.”

The deal, first reported by Bloomberg News, would give Southwest the control of 14 takeoff and landing slots, sufficient to operate seven round trip flights a day.

While Southwest has operated on Long Island out of Islip, N.Y., since 1999, it has bypassed the three major New York-area airports, LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark.

Its strategy has long been to avoid the congested airports like the New York facilities and to fly to secondary airports where operating costs and air traffic control problems would be less.

However, as it has begun to run out of those types of airports and markets to enter, Southwest has had to turn its eye to markets it previously had avoided.

Southwest chairman and chief executive officer Gary Kelly recently announced plans to launch flights in March to Minneapolis-St. Paul, a connecting hub for Northwest Airlines Inc. In the past two years, it has re-entered the highly competitive San Francisco market and Denver, two cities it previously had left.

Now, Ms. Harbin said, Southwest officials think it is time to enter LaGuardia.

“We’ve matured to the point where we can contemplate it,” Ms. Harbin said. “Gary has said several times that if there are prudent opportunities out there we should be looking at them. This is certainly one.”

Southwest had once competed heavily against ATA out of Chicago Midway. But after ATA filed for bankruptcy a first time, Southwest worked out a deal in 2004 to buy gates and other facilities at Midway and to share passengers with ATA, including having ATA carry Southwest customers from Chicago to LaGuardia.

ATA exited bankruptcy in 2006. But after months of mounting losses, the carrier again filed for bankruptcy earlier this year and ceased operations. It already had stopped service to New York, and its grounding also left Southwest with any way to get its customers to Hawaii.

Southwest’s bid, which was filed by ATA Tuesday evening, could be superseded by other bidders. The matter comes up in a Dec. 2 hearing.

Ms. Harbin stressed that while Southwest legally has offered to buy ATA Airlines, it is doing so only to gain control of ATA’s LaGuardia’s slots.

“We’re being very clear that it doesn’t include any aircraft, facilities or employees of ATA,” she said.

I highly doubt SWA would want to start flying into one of the most delayed airports in the nation. I'd like to know what the percentage of flights that "hold" going in there every day is. It is NOT a pretty picture. :confused:

Why not ?? They already do Philly.

We already fly into some of the most delayed airports. The list also included PHL,DEN, SFO,MSP(new service next spring) and now LGA. EWR, JFK, ORD and ATL rounded out the top airports. I am not sure what order they were in, but as you can see SWA goes or will be going to about half of them. So no big deal. The model is changing.

Southwest is going to codeshare with jetBlue for the LGA flying. [/sarcasm]

Any predictions out there on Southwest adding MEM to their system?

Add CVG to the list too.

Might not be the best time to buy LGA slots.
The govt is planning to confiscate slots and auction them.

LUV is becoming more and more like the "legacies" they seem to enjoy making so much fun of... interesting... Now that the fuel playing field is becoming more level, it will be fascinating to see how the competition factor plays out, cause I'm bettin that their costs are about to start climbing just like everybody else's.

JFK???????? really???? welcome to the quagmire :D:D:D PHL is NOTHING compared to the NYC airports.