United Airlines will stop flying to John F. Kennedy International Airport in October and shift premium cross-country flights there to its nearby hub in Newark, New Jersey.
The move will strengthen United’s position in Newark, where it is already the dominant airline, while withdrawing from an airport where it lags far behind Delta, JetBlue and American in passengers.
The problem for United at JFK: It didn’t offer any connecting flights for passengers who arrived from Los Angeles and San Francisco. If those people wanted to travel on to Europe, they needed to catch a ride to Newark or switch at JFK to another airline.
Executives of United Continental Holdings Inc. said the JFK service has lost money over the past seven years, although they declined to say how much.
