Virgin America faces familiar and fierce competition on potential routes from New York LaGuardia

Virgin America's recent declaration that it would acquire six slot pairs at New York LaGuardia airport has fuelled speculation of where those slots will be put to use given the flight restrictions present at the airport. Those caps prohibit direct service to the carrier's main bases of San Francisco and Los Angeles, so Virgin America must set its sights on mid-con routes such as Chicago O'Hare or perhaps north-south route pairings along the US east coast.

A school of thought is also emerging that perhaps Virgin America opportunistically grabbed the slots to trade them for expanded access to other slot-controlled airports such as Newark Liberty or Washington National. Only Virgin America can definitively explain its motives for purchasing the slots from American. But there is one certainty that lingers over discussions regarding potential routes Virgin America will serve from LaGuardia - the carrier will have lots of (not always welcome) company in any route pairing it selects.