Northwest Airlines bought 67 slots at then Washington National airport from bankrupt Eastern Air Lines in 1991, paving its way to becoming the second largest carrier at the close-in Washington DC airport.
The Minneapolis-based carrier wasted no time in setting up a focus city at National – nine new routes were added to primarily Florida and the northeast in April 1991.
Northwest route map from June 1992.
Funny how history repeats itself.
About this time last year, we were pondering where JetBlue Airways would fly with its newly purchased 12 slot pairs at National. These joined the eight pairs it got from American in exchange for some of its New York JFK slots in 2010 and the eight pairs it bought from the Delta Air Lines-US Airways slot swap in 2011.
The New York-based carrier ended up using its slot portfolio to add three-quarters of the eight cities that Northwest added from National in 1991.
There are several relatively simple explanations for the differences – Atlanta, Charleston (South Carolina), Fort Myers, Jacksonville, Miami and Nassau – between Northwest and JetBlue’s respective network expansions from National.
Today, Atlanta and Miami are large hubs dominated by Delta Airlines, which merged with Northwest in 2008, and American Airlines, respectively. However in 1991, both were semi-open markets following the demise of Eastern where Northwest could potentially grab share.
In terms of Charleston, Jacksonville and Nassau, Northwest simply did not serve the cities in 1991. All of the routes that it added from National were to cities that it already served, probably indicating a preference to simply connect-the-dots within its network with the Washington DC airport.
“Northwest was probably more interested in onshore markets,” says Robert Mann, a former airline executive and New York-based airline industry analyst with RW Mann & Company, on the lack of Nassau.
Fort Myers, while served by Northwest at the time, was not nearly the size and scope that it is today in 1991. The population more than doubled to 679,513 from 1990 through 2014, US Census data shows, and it has established itself as a popular holiday destination on the Gulf of Mexico.
JetBlue route map from April 2015.
Nantucket is a recently announced seasonal route that JetBlue will operate with a slot that it uses for Florida service during the winter and San Juan is only possible with one of the slot pairs that allow flights beyond National’s 2,012km (1,250 mile) perimeter that were created in 2012.
JetBlue appears to have a far more solid business than Northwest ever did at National. The legacy carrier pulled its focus city in July 1992, a little over a year after it launched the first flights, choosing instead to focus its assets on its Detroit, Memphis and Minneapolis/St. Paul hubs. It is unclear what it did with the slots.
JetBlue has said nothing but the opposite about National during the past year, instead pushing for more slots – not less.
