What is a slot, and why does the European Commission (EC) want so desperately to become involved in its future? A slot is not a physical entity, it is merely a permission for a particular airline to land an aircraft, or have that aircraft take off, at a particular time - what lawyers would know as an access right. It cannot necessarily be satisfactorily defined in isolation by an airline, an airport, or by any other body.
To an airline, a slot is an integral part of a service which has a starting point, a routing and a destination, all fixed in time, and all of those four elements have to be considered together. It is no use having permission to land an aircraft at a particular time at a destination if that aircraft could not take off from the point of origin of the service (because, for example, of a night curfew) at the right time, or if that timing would place the aircraft in an airway which was too congested to be able to accommodate it.
It would seem to follow logically from all this that it is almost impossible to declare a slot to be a single entity which could be owned, traded (or even confiscated)by a single body - yet that is what happens in the non-European parts of the world. It is also what seems to be contemplated by the EC.
In markets like the USA, it is commonplace to allow an airline dedicated use of a gate or terminal, but there are few airports in Europe which have such an abundance of space and facilities as to make that possible. Europeans should be wary of thinking that they can transfer American slot principles to their own market. So what can they do to ensure that airlines have fair and equitable access to major airports?
For a start, define "fair and equitable". To some, that means giving equal-access opportunities to all airlines, large and small, start-up and established. The EC, for one, has clearly set out its stall as champion of new entrants. Yet as the incumbent European airlines argue, depriving them of slots handicaps their attempts to create highly competitive global networks.
What is needed is a body which can take all these factors and interests into consideration in allocating a slot (or whatever it is rightly called). That body (currently airline-dominated in most cases where there is one) should be able to consider the impact of allocations on ATS.
One reason why the EC has got involved in the slots debate is that it thinks it can foster competition in the airline sector by forcing slots into the hands of start-up carriers. In that, it is wrong. Giving a start-up 20 slots a week at London Heathrow or Paris Charles de Gaulle is not going to make the slightest difference in establishing that airline as a credible alternative to the incumbent British Airways or Air France. The number of slots is not enough, and, without any other way of winning more would probably be doomed to remain small. Neither is there any guarantee that the new entrant would concentrate on routes where competition is currently thin. Experience suggests and economics dictates that new entrants make for the lucrative trunk routes the same as everyone else.
Also, in most cases within Europe there is not a need for greater competition between airlines so much as between different modes of transport. If the EC wants to foster competition, let it work at levelling the playing field so that air travel competes on a sound basis with rail and road.
If slot allocation policy needs to be changed then it should be through a mechanism which represents the interests of airports, airlines and ATS providers, which allows allocation of access to airports on the basis of the benefit to the system as a whole. Perhaps that could be via establishing a sort of "lease-price" on the whole of a service, including the access to the airports at each end. That price could be factored to take into account time of day, social need, etc and the leasing fees ploughed back into improving the infrastructure. Such leases could be made conditional on the attaining of specific performance targets for the airlines holding them, and transferrable only in the case of failure to meet those targets, so that there would always be a pressure to improve service. Of course, the whole idea smacks of regulation, which would never do, but it would be a lot better than trying to introduce artificial competition into an industry which has enough of the real stuff already.
Source: Flight International
