JetBlue, which added Paris and Amsterdam this year to its first European destination, London, I’d getting ready to fight for its Amsterdam slots while adding two more European destinations.
The airline fears that the Dutch government’s plan to reduce Amsterdam Schiphol from 500,000 flights a year to 425,000 will see it squeezed out, and is asking the U.S. Department of Transportation to commit to banning Dutch airline KLM from some U.S. flights in retaliation if it loses its slots, or to force KLM to give up some of its Schiphol slots to make room for JetBlue.
The planned reduction is based on a government plan to reduce noise pollution, but its status is unclear. Airlines and the airport sued the government, winning a decision that other methods hadn’t been fully considered, but that was overturned on appeal and the new decision is now being appealed.
Meanwhile, Jetblue has announced that it will start summer service from New York and Boston to Dublin and Edinburgh next summer.
