Navigating towards a more efficient airport slots allocation regime in Europe

The aviation sector has experienced continued growth over the past years, which has significantly enhanced connectivity within Europe, and translated into important socio-economic benefits. To put things into perspective, European airports alone employ roughly 12.3 million people and generate €675 billion each year (4.1% of GDP) in Europe. As air transport becomes increasingly prominent for both citizens and businesses, traffic flows will continue on a firm upwards trajectory and are, in fact expected to double in Europe by 2035 according to IATA estimates. This surge in air transport demand is placing increasing pressure on scarce airport infrastructure and capacity, which in turn can lead to delays, weakened connectivity and lowered quality of services.
Following the creation of a single market for aviation in the 1990s, and in light of continuous growth in air transport, the need for regulation of airport slots was acknowledged in order to ensure an efficient use of capacity at congested airports. Back in 1993 the EU adopted its first common rules for the allocation of slots at EU airports in line with the IATA’s Worldwide Scheduling Guidelines. Slots, granting the right to take-off or land at so-called ‘Level 3’ (or slot-coordinated) airports at a specific time period, are allocated by independent coordinators on the basis of historic rights (or ‘grandfather rights’) at the given airport. What is more, slots ownership is reassessed on an annual basis, whereby failure by an airline to use 80% of its allocated slots could result in their loss and reallocation to other airlines in the subsequent year (i.e. the so-called ‘use it or lose it’ rule).