I find it interesting in the final order that we’re are now required to start 3 weekly flights to Albuquerque NM, Birmingham AL and Macon GA even though I’m not aware that we’ve ever opened a station there.

Its incorrect, Spirit notes that on their request for exemption

Looks like someone beat me to posting the link to Actual final order, it wasn’t available when I created the thread.

I think this portion of the order is probably the most significant. Some guys probably won’t want to browse the entire document.

Starting page 7.

“The Department recognizes the objections of NACA and the low-cost and ultra-low-cost carriers. The Department has determined that the impact on these carriers from the approach proposed in the Show Cause Order would be disproportionate and potentially at odds with the aims of the CARES Act. The Department will therefore modify its tentative findings by adjusting the minimum service levels for all carriers by, in effect, creating a third category. The Department will now require that any carrier with a greater than 10 percent share of total industry domestic capacity23 in calendar year 2019 that served a point more than 25 times per week will need to continue serving that point at least five times per week; for points served between five and 25 times per week, the carrier would need to provide at least three weekly flights; and for points served less than five times per week, it would only need to provide one weekly flight. For covered carriers with less than a 10 percent share of total industry domestic capacity in calendar year 2019 that served a point five or more times per week, it would only need to provide three weekly flights and for points served less than five times per week, it would only need to provide one weekly flight. Some carriers, including Allegiant and Frontier, provided additional specific recommendations for the Service Obligation and exemptions that the Department is declining to adopt here. The CARES Act provides the Department with broad discretion to impose service obligations on carriers receiving financial assistance, as it deems necessary and we believe the approach outlined here is appropriate. The modified methodology adopted by DOT results in minimum service obligations that are significantly below carriers’ full pre-pandemic schedules, and provides sufficient flexibility for carriers of all business models to meet their service obligations. The Department believes this modification strikes an appropriate balance between the needs of communities to retain at least minimal connections to the national air transportation system during the public health emergency, as required by the CARES Act, and the economic needs of certain segments of the industry on which the original proposal would have had a disproportionate impact.”

I counted them up as best I can, I see 145ish weekly flights to the stations listed based on Feb’s numbers. If they even had to double that amount of flights to meet the obligations for each “station” it would still only be like 40 flights a day. 40 flights a day would be a 91 percent cut or so assuming 4400 a week previously.

And it’s still about 10x more than they’re doing now.

I’d like to think optics might factor in to this a bit, but really I’m sure they’ll see which side the scales lean toward financially and make the decision.

arent we currently doing 56 a day? How is that 10x what we are doing now?

Exactly. Even if we add another 40 flights a day to comply (not sure), even that isn’t much.

I have no idea what this all means. If the poster above has good numbers I interpret that meaning we could actually go down from 56 to 40 total a day if we want and still comply with CARES. I don’t know

Did you see the reason Spirit listed for not wanting to serve the airports they listed

“To the extent that the CARES Act support for contractors is not sufficient or properly distributed, Spirit may have to financially support contractors in certain markets, As of date of filing and based on publicly available future airline schedules, this city is well-served by numerous other airlines”

I’m doubtful that the govt will approve these exemptions because by this logic every airline could say “another airline goes there so I don’t need to.”


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https://thepointsguy.com/news/jetblu...ice-12-cities/

looks like JB applied for exemptions too.