Southwest Airlines announced in July that it would cease operations at New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR). The announcement ignited a tarmac turf war with many airlines, including Spirit Airlines, JetBlue, and Frontier Airlines looking to fill the vacancies Southwest would leave.
Not every airline wants those routes filled, though. United Airlines (NASDAQ: UAL), a company that uses EWR as one of its eight U.S. hubs, would like to see no one pick up Southwest's old slots. United is looking to keep the competition out and hopefully curb EWR's problem with flight delays.
According to a flight data study by AirHelp, reported by Forbes, EWR ranked worst domestically in getting flights out on time. Just 63.9% of all flights between June and July of this year left on time. With the airport passenger count nearing 46 million in 2018, that's a lot of potentially unhappy customers.