Southwest Airlines Co plans to bid aggressively for takeoff and landing rights at Reagan National Airport near Washington, as it looks to bring more competition to the nation's capital, a senior company executive said. The slots are coming up for sale as American Airlines Group Inc makes divestitures required under a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice that allowed AMR and US Airways to merge."We are very interested in picking up as many DCA (Reagan National) slots as we can," Robert Jordan, Southwest's executive vice president and chief commercial officer, said in an interview at the carrier's Dallas headquarters on Tuesday.He said Southwest needs a critical mass of slots to have an effect on fares at the airport. Southwest, which bought AirTran in 2011, said it currently has 32 slots at Reagan National."We need a meaningful number of slots to be able to compete effectively at Reagan," Jordan said. "We don't need 10; we need 50 or 60 or 70. We're going to be aggressive in terms of bidding."
Southwest Airlines Co. operates Southwest Airlines, a passenger airline, which provides scheduled air transportation in the United States. Shares of LUV traded higher by 0.43% or $0.08/share to $18.58. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $9.85 and as high as $18.98. On average, 6891700 shares of LUV exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 5794048.
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