JetBlue is relinquishing its claim to almost a third of its flight slots at the Long Beach Airport, after the city signaled it may penalize the airline for low usage.

City Manager Pat West said in a Tuesday, April 9, statement that the carrier will give up 10 of its 34 slots to other airlines.

“We expect very strong demand from airlines currently operating at the Long Beach Airport for each of the 10 flight slots that were made available today,” West said, “and will immediately begin the process to allocate the available slots.”

Representatives for JetBlue did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to a Wednesday, April 3, memo that West sent to City Council members, Hawaiian Airlines is first on the waiting list for new flight slots, followed by Delta Airlines.

The move came after Long Beach sent a letter to JetBlue about the airline’s failure to meet a new requirement that all carriers must use their flight slots more often than they had in the past.

The City Council approved the new rule in November, which obligates carriers to use 70% of their slots in any calendar quarter and 85% in any calendar year. Prior to the vote, airlines had to maintain a 57% usage rate over any given 180-day period.

If airlines did not comply with the new rule, Long Beach reserved the right to disqualify them from receiving extra flight slots or to reduce the number of slots available to them.

Although city staff said at the time of the vote that the change was to prevent what’s known as “slot-squatting” and to make the airport’s operations more fair to all carriers, Robert Land, JetBlue’s senior vice president of government affairs, said at the time that the new rule appeared “specifically designed to harm JetBlue.”

That’s because JetBlue had the lowest usage rate of all of the airport’s seven carriers. At the time the City Council voted, American, Delta, Hawaiian and Southwest were all using 100% of their slots. FedEx and UPS were both using 71% of theirs — while JetBlue was using 66.1%.

In a Monday, April 8 statement prior to its decision to give up the slots, JetBlue said that while the company believes “this rule change is unnecessary as evidenced by the numerous unused slots already available, we remain committed to providing a level of flying in Long Beach that the market will support.”