Delta, US Airways close deal to transfer flying rights in New York and Washington, D.C., US Airways accepts the 7000th Airbus

Delta Air Lines (Atlanta) and US Airways (Phoenix) have announced the closing of their agreement to transfer takeoff and landing rights at New York ‘s LaGuardia and Washington D.C .’s Reagan National airports.

The agreement was approved on October 10 , 2011, by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), which concluded that the transaction is in the public interest because of the service benefits and efficiencies that would result in both New York and Washington, D.C.

Under the agreement, Delta acquired 132 slot pairs at LaGuardia from US Airways and US Airways acquired from Delta 42 slot pairs at Reagan National, as well as the rights to operate additional daily service to Sao Paulo, Brazil in 2015. In addition, the airlines divested 16 slot pairs at LaGuardia and eight slot pairs at Reagan National to airlines with limited or no service at those airports.

The airlines will separately announce their expanded schedules in New York and Washington, D.C. in the near future.

In other news, US Airways yesterday (December 13) accepted its new Airbus A321-231 registered as N552UW (msn 4957).

This was also a milestone for Airbus which delivered its 7,000th aircraft, this A321 to US Airways – the airline that operates the largest fleet of Airbus aircraft in the world – from the Airbus facility in Hamburg, Germany. This milestone comes just two years after the delivery of Airbus’ 6,000th aircraft.

The 1,000th Airbus delivery was an A340-300 that went to Air France in 1993, nineteen years after the first Airbus aircraft was delivered – an A300B2 also to Air France, in 1974. The 2,000th delivery was six years later in 1999. It took half that time, just three years, to get to the 3,000th delivery in 2002 and three more years to reach 4,000 deliveries. The tempo went up another notch taking Airbus only two years to hand over its 5,000th aircraft, an A330-200 to Qantas in December 2007. The 6,000th Airbus was an A380 which was delivered to Emirates in January 2010.

US Airways Slide Show: CLICK HERE