United Airlines will begin service out of New York JFK next year, returning to the airport for the first time in five years.
Beginning Feb. 1, United will add service between JFK and both Los Angeles and San Francisco, with two daily flights to each city except for Tuesdays and Saturdays, when there will be one flight to each city.
The flights will use reconfigured Boeing 767-300ER aircraft that include premium cabin seating with lie-flat seats, which makes it comparable to United's flight offerings between Newark and the two West Coast cities.
United ended operations at JFK in 2015, turning over its slots at the airport to Delta Air Lines in exchange for Delta's slots at Newark, United's stronghold in the New York area -- a deal that later was dropped amid a U.S. Justice Department challenge. Two years later, according to published reports at the time, United CEO Scott Kirby, who was then serving as United's president after holding the same role at American Airlines, said that United leaving JFK was a "mistake," as it ceded to American some large corporate clients whose travelers preferred JFK to Newark.
United has been working with regulatory authorities to get slots at JFK, Ankit Gupta, vice president of domestic network planning, said on a media call Tuesday morning. JFK has recently gained additional available capacity both through completed runway construction and from reduction in capacity by some international carriers, United chief communications officer Josh Earnest said.
As demand grows, United likely will expand service from JFK, including to its hubs in Houston and Chicago, Gupta said.
This report was initially published in Business Travel News.