United Airlines has announced it will no longer fly out of New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport starting at the end of October after requests to expand its operations were not initially honored by the hub.
The commercial airline will stop flying out of the New York airport after its last inbound flights on Oct. 29, the company wrote in a memo that was shared with Travel + Leisure. The decision comes after United requested additional slots at the major airport but said it was “clear that [the] process to add additional capacity at JFK will take some time.”
Currently, the airline operates four flights daily out of JFK, while most of United’s flights into the New York area come out of its Newark Liberty International Airport hub. United will continue to fly out of New York’s domestic airport, LaGuardia.
“Given our current, too-small-to-be-competitive schedule out of JFK — coupled with the start of the Winter season where more airlines will operate their slots as they resume JFK flying — United has made the difficult decision to suspend service at JFK temporarily,” the airline wrote in the statement provided to T+L. “We know this news is especially tough for the 100 employees who work at JFK today. We held a series of in-person meetings earlier today to ensure our team knows that no one is losing their job and that we’re going to work hard to make their transition to other nearby stations as smooth as possible.”
United said the suspension of flights out of JFK was temporary, and the company would “continue our pursuit of a bigger and more desirable schedule for our customers and be ready to seize those opportunities if and when they surface.”
The move also comes after a decision by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to remove Newark from the list of NYC airport codes to can still see flight options for Newark when they search for flights to or from NYC on airline sites or through online travel agencies.
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