Republic Airways Holdings, parent of Frontier and the defunct Midwest Airlines, has won a court decision against the Department of Transportation (DOT) for taking away a pair of takeoff and landing slots at Washington Reagan National Airport.
The case was triggered by Republic’s acquisition of Midwest in 2009. At the time, Midwest was operating three daily Washington-Kansas City flights, which Republic intended to continue after the acquisition.
The DOT, however, determined that one of the slots had been awarded under a special program to encourage new entry and/or flights to underserved markets and could not be transferred, and it decided to withdraw that slot and award it to another airline.
Midwest protested that the slot was not “transferred” but merely acquired as part of a merger, and cited precedents involving other airline mergers to buttress its case.
The DOT, however, rejected those claims and awarded the slot to Sun Country Airlines for service to Lansing, Mich.
Republic appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which recently ruled that the DOT action was “arbitrary and capricious,” saying the DOT not only failed to observe its own precedents, but “ignored them completely.”
In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel vacated the DOT order, which could have the effect of returning the slot to Republic.
According to Frontier's website, Republic operates three daily nonstops in the market under Frontier’s F9 code.