Somebody didn't want SWA to get them....
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Financial Post: WestJet wins LaGuardia bundle
The
Financial Post of Canada is quoting sources as saying WestJet Airlines has won the bidding for LaGuardia slots.
As we wrote in the previous item, it appeared the same bidder was the high bidder for both New York LaGuardia bundles and the Washington National bundle, each with 16 takeoff and landing slots sufficient for eight round trips a day.
The government's intent was to have two different airlines purchase the two LaGuardia bids, but provided an option as spelled out in the Federal Register notice of Oct. 13:
"An eligible carrier may, under our proposal, purchase only one slot bundle at each airport (while indicating preference ranking for each slot bundle as part of its offer). However, should one carrier make the highest bid on both bundles at LaGuardia, we proposed that the seller would have the option of accepting both high bids, thus overriding the one bundle per carrier proposal."
If we assume Southwest Airlines is the high bidder who provided the identical $32,000,050.01 bids for both LaGuardia bundles, we would guess that the selling airline would prefer not to have Southwest buy both bundles.
That would open the door for the second-place bidder, the one that bid $17,600,001.00 in both cases. If the Southwest was the high bidder and
Financial Post is correct, that probably would be WestJet.
The seller of the LaGuardia slots, whether it's Delta or US Airways, would be leaving $14,400,049.01 on the table to avoid having Southwest get all the slots.
On the other hand, is WestJet the high bidder at both New York and LaGuardia? The
Financial Post reported Nov. 9 that the Calgary-based airline wanted slots at both slot-restricted airports.
