The Transportation Department has finalized its decision on which airlines get the five additional routes at Washington Reagan National Airport (DCA) that will be exempted from the 1,250-mile perimeter.
Those flights will join the 20 daily roundtrips that are already exempted from the 1,250-mile limit.
The winners are unchanged from the DOT’s tentative October order. Alaska Airlines has been authorized for service to San Diego, American can fly to San Antonio, Delta to Seattle, Southwest to Las Vegas, and United to San Francisco.
Each of the new routes must be activated within 90 days from the Dec. 17 order unless otherwise requested and approved.
JetBlue, Spirit and Frontier applied for the slot pairs but lost out. The DOT determined that Spirit and Frontier were ineligible. Per the statute that governs the Reagan National perimeter rule, only airlines that already operate flights within the 1,250-mile perimeter can qualify as an incumbent operator at the airport, and only incumbent operators were eligible to be allocated one of the new flights beyond the perimeter.
Spirit does not currently fly to Reagan National. Frontier serves the airport from Denver but has no flights within the 1,250-mile perimeter.
The DOT ruled JetBlue’s application the weakest among the six that were eligible because the airline is already the lone carrier serving San Juan from Washington Reagan.
All three of the losing applicants objected to the DOT’s tentative October decision. JetBlue argued that by awarding the slots to the five largest applicants, the DOT diminished competition.
The DOT rebutted that contention.
“While JetBlue may be a smaller competitor at DCA, its status as the sole operator of DCA-San Juan service, and commanding share of local origin/destination customers on this route outweigh, in this case, the competitive merits of a slot exemption award,” the department wrote.
The five new daily slot pairs were established as part of the FAA reauthorization bill that became law in May. The 1,250-mile limit at DCA is inclusive of major airports like Minneapolis, Dallas and Houston but excludes flights beyond parts of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas.