Capacity changes at the New York airports confirm the international focus of manline carriers with regional operations increasing by double digits at JFK and Newark, while regional operations at LaGuardia take an 8.6 percent hit.
The differences reflect the fact that Kennedy and Newark are international connecting airports where mainline carriers need the feed, especially from smaller communites where fares are higher becasue of less service, according to Nicole Biser of OAGback, which did the capacity analysis. LaGuardia, on the other hand has no transatlantic service and is largely seen as an origin-and-destination facility. As this down gauging at hubs grows, more and more passengers are flying the entire trip on regionals.
At Kennedy, according to OAGback, which calculated the changes for Regional Aviation News, capacity will only be reduced one percent by the fourth quarter, compared to the year-ago period. While mainline operations will lose 2,052 departures mainlines will have 37,839, down 5.1 percent. Regional departures are rising 11.5 percent (1,427) to 13,852 departures. Mainline seats will decline by 286,850 or four percent to 6,904,837. Regional seats will increase 22 percent (137,304) to 761,196. The total seat decline will be only 1.9 percent to 7,666,033
The picture is very different at LaGuardia where all sectors show declines in both seats and departures. Mainline departures will decline 3.1 percent (781) to 24,193, while regional departures will decline 8.6 percent (2,053) to 21,832 departures. Total departures will be down 5.8 percent to 46,025. As for seats, mainline capacity will drop 5.9 percent (209,209) to 3,323,695 in the fourth quarter while regionals seats drop 4.7 percent (49,958) to 1,016,538. Total seats will decline 5.6 percent (259,167) to 4,340,233 seats.
The Newark capacity cuts in the fourth quarter are similar to the experience at Kennedy, according to OAGback, which calculated the changes on July 31. Mainline departures will drop 10.5 percent (3,241) to 27,466 as regional operations increase 18.3 percent (3,523) to 22,797. Total departures will drop only 0.6 percent to (292) to 50,263 in the fourth quarter. Mainlines are switching seats to regionals eliminating 9.5 percent (462,705) seats in favor of growing regional seats by 31.4 percent (298,737). Total capacity at the airport will drop only 2.8 percent (163,968) to 5,648,606.

National Capacity Cuts
The regional share of departure cuts will be 54 percent to mainline cuts of 46.5 percent. Regional departures will drop 7.4 percent (1,180,119) of departures, compared to 6.3 percent (1,225,500) for mainline carriers, according to OAGback.
Regional share of the total decline in seats is only 15.5 percent to the 84.5 percent mainline share. Regional seats will drop 4.6 percent, or 2.6 million to 55,101,787. Mainline seats will drop 7.6 percent (14,322,077) to 175,356,574). Total seats will drop 6.9 percent (16,956,364) to 230,458,561