United Airlines plans to begin flying 213-seat Boeing 757-300s on its existing routes between Washington Reagan National Airport (DCA) and its hubs in Denver and San Francisco.
That report comes from Flightglobal’s Edward Russell, who writes “flying the 757-300 to Washington National will give United the title of operating the largest regularly scheduled aircraft at the airport.” Currently, slightly smaller 757-200s flown by American and Delta are the largest aircraft flying regular flights at DCA.
United confirmed its change to Today in the Sky. It makes the switch on its DCA-Denver route March 3, upgauging from a mix of 150-seat Airbus A320 and 166-seat Boeing 737-800s. United’s move on the DCA-San Francisco route comes March 23 when it changes from 166-seat Boeing 737-800s.
DCA, of course, is one of the few big U.S. airports subject to capacity controls. A capped number of “slots” are available, with one slot allowing a takeoff or landing. To add additional flights at DCA, a carrier would have to acquire more “slots.” That prevents carriers from growing their flight schedules at DCA unless they can find another airline willing to relinquish slots, which rarely happens voluntarily.
Even more rare at DCA is a federal “Perimeter Rule” that restricts regularly scheduled flights to distances 1,250 statute miles or less. However, Congress has sporadically whittled away at those restrictions during the past decade, approving a series of “beyond-perimeter slot exemptions” that have allowed longer flights.
Thanks to Congress’ action — or meddling, depending on one’s viewpoint — there are now 20 regularly scheduled round-trip flights beyond DCA’s 1,250-mile “perimeter.” United has won rights to two of those 20 flights; it flies one daily round-trip to Denver and one to San Francisco. It cannot add additional flights on either route.
The only way for United to grow its presence on those two DCA routes is to go to a larger aircraft on existing flights. Flightglobal’s Russell notes United’s change on the DCA-Denver and DCA-San Francisco routes comes after its revenue chief said in January that United was “shifting capacity away from Houston and into other growing markets, like Denver and San Francisco.” Houston, San Francisco and Denver all are hubs for United.
As for DCA, regional aircraft and narrowbodies like the 737 or A320 family are by far the most common planes operating at the airport. But DCA is able to handle larger jets – a Vietnam Airlines Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” widebody landed there in July 2015 while on a promotional tour.
Nonetheless, there are restraints at the hemmed-in airfield that sits just across the Potomac River from downtown Washington, D.C.
“We do have design constraints associated with this group of aircraft and larger, meaning that certain gates at Reagan National are designed for certain classes of aircraft and not all gates can accommodate a 757,” Washington airports spokeswoman Kimberly Gibbs says in a statement to Today in the Sky. “On occasion 767 and larger-class aircraft have flown into DCA but this is definitely not the norm.”
But as airlines face obstacles to growing at the popular D.C. airport, they’ve increasingly resorted to bigger planes to boost passenger numbers. Flightglobal’s Russell notes passenger traffic at DCA had surged more than 11% through November 2015, pushing DCA’s passenger numbers past metro Washington’s much larger Dulles International Airport.
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which runs both airports, has launched a series of upgrades for DCA in an effort to handle the growing crowds.
“Upgauging isn’t new at Reagan National, we’ve seen a number of airlines do it in recent years, contributing to record passenger numbers, a strain on airport facilities and added congestion for passengers,” Gibbs says in a statement to Today in the Sky. “The recently announced $1 billion construction program is to help alleviate these issues.
USA Today
United Airlines will operate the 757-300 out of DCA
