United Airlines announced on Friday, September 30th that they will suspend services out of NYC’s JFK Airport starting in late October, reports the New York Times.
The service suspension isn’t coming as a total surprise, as the airline previously requested additional flights from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to keep up with other competitors flying out of NYC’s busy International Airport, threatening action would be taken if their request wasn’t fulfilled.
According to Reuters, United Airlines had been flying two roundtrips a day from JFK to both San Francisco and Los Angeles for the past year. Previous to that, United Airlines hadn’t serviced JFK for five years until it resumed flights back in 2021, shared the New York Times.
With the FAA not granting the airline’s requested expansion, United Airlines will temporarily stop service out of JFK on Saturday, October 29th.
“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 temporarily suspend service at JFK,” said United Airlines. According to the New York Times, United Airlines was operating on unused slots at JFK earlier in the pandemic, however, with travel on its way back to pre-pandemic levels, those slots have since been returned to other airlines.
The 100 employees who had been working United Airlines at JFK will have the opportunity to work at nearby airports, shares ABC7.
There has been no specified return date as of now.