Airlines are lining up to request exemptions to a rule that
requires them to continue to serve all domestic destinations through Sept. 30 in
exchange for accepting federal stimulus money.
Under the rule, which the Transportation Department
finalized last week, carriers must choose between flying to all cities they were
serving in the last week of February 2020 or all of the cities they served
during the heart of the summer flying season last year. The stipulation is
designed so that connectivity will be maintained in destinations big and small
for the transport of emergency workers and supplies and in order to ease the
regeneration of economic activity as Covid-19 crisis eases.
However, the DOT does allow for airlines to apply for
permission to leave destinations before Sept. 30.
So far, budget carriers Frontier and Spirit have applied for
the most exemptions. Frontier has asked permission to stop serving 35 mostly
small and midsized destinations through June 10, while Spirit has requested to
pull out of 26 destinations of varying size until service again becomes
feasible.
JetBlue, Hawaiian, Delta and United are also seeking to exit
destinations, or to not start summer service as soon as the DOT is requiring.
Hawaiian, for example, has asked for retroactive approval to not serve Boston,
Las Vegas, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego and Seattle --
cities to which it has already halted flights.
Delta has asked for exemptions for 10 destinations,
including some summer destinations for which it says launch before May or June
is not feasible. JetBlue has asked for permission to suspend service to 11
airports through June 10. United wants to suspend service to 19 destinations in
Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Hawaii and the continental U.S.