The so-called Open Skies agreement inked that in theory allows any airline in the 25-member EU to fly anywhere in the U.S. and U.S. carriers anywhere in the EU.

This has prompted the following expected new flights:

Delta is trying hard to get landing routes at Heathrow for Atlanta-Heahtrow flights

Virgin Atlantic is studying new flights to/from six European cities from Neward and JFK to places like Madrid, Zurich and Milan

Aer Lingus has announced plans to serve SF, Orlando and Dulles

United and BMI are seeking approval to extend their code sharing agreement so on the United web site they could buy one ticket to lots of European desinations

Has there been any information as to how capacity at various airports might affect this?

For example, there are very few, if any available landing slots left at Washington's National Airport which is one, of several, reasons we rarely see new service there.

It would be interesting to find out if there are any potential restrictions at other airports.

London Heathrow slot is also full. I'm not expecting more flights. At most it could be just a swap between airlines.

Current shares of trans-Atlantic market:

BA 12%
Lufthansa 10%
Delta 10%
American 10%
Continental 8%
United 7%
Virgin Atlantic 7%
Air France 6%
Northwest 5%
Flybynight .001%

source: Back Aviation Solutions

LHR and LGW are slot controlled, with LHR ones especially expensive. Airlines trying to get departure and arrival slots at those airports need to buy them from airlines that have them right now.

That's why you see EOS, and Maxjet using Stansted and Silverjet using Luton. One may see a few more US-STN flights in the future.

Also the reason why Virgin is thinking about doing Europe-US flights, because their growth at LGW and LHR is limited by slots. They basically have to think outside London.

Besides Delta, Continental will also move or add at least one IAH-London flight to LHR. They seem to have secured slots from an undisclosed source.

rkkwan:

what about the new Heathrow terminal 5 - who has dibs on that and wouldn't those slots be up for bid? Thanks

BA will move everything to the new terminal, and probably other oneworld airlines. I don't know the details.

But the departure and arrival slots have nothing to do with terminals and gates. They can build 100 terminals all the way to Central London, but there's still only 2 runways, with the restricted number of flights allowed within each time period.

It's actually kind of funny that London is served by 5 airports with a total of 6 runways.

While DFW alone has 7 runways, while DAL has 3, and various general aviation and cargo airports around the Dallas/Ft Worth area have many more.

Wasn't there some discussion about how the British Government was going to try to "preserve" the "dominance" of BA at LHR..or perhaps it was "protect"...certainly there must be many political and economic considerations that come with all of these "agreements."