Why can’t airlines pay to keep their airplane slots, without having to fly empty planes?
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This is a distinctly EU problem that arises out of an old dispute related to the Gibraltar airport, but the short of it is “because the EU says they have to fly empty planes and is unwilling to change its position on the matter.”
This started in the 1980’s with the Gibraltar airport. Spanish airlines wanted to fly in to Gibraltar and the airport had more than sufficient capacity to allow that to happen. However, British Airways owned all of the flight slots for Gibraltar and refused to sell them to Spanish airlines, despite the fact that most were unused. Spain and the UK allowed the EU to mediate, and the resolution that they came up with was a system whereby airlines flying into/out of Gibraltar had to have 80% utilization on their slots to keep them, with unused slots being auctioned off.
The EU then adopted that measure as a broader regulation that applied to all EU airports. The measure itself has had a strong protective effect on EU airlines – its quite easy for domestic EU airlines to fly empty short haul flights to maintain their spots at major airports. Conversely, non-EU airlines operating out of major airports often don’t have the slots in smaller, regional airports that are necessary to run short haul flights. As a result, they’re often forced to choose between flying expensive, empty international flights or abandoning their EU slots. In nearly every case this results in them abandoning their excess EU slots.
That system has ensured that EU airlines have remained dominant in the EU market despite extremely strong competition from Middle Eastern airlines.
The EU reduced the ratio of flights to slots to 50%, but has shown no interest in going any lower than that and has announced plans to increase the ratio to 63% in March. As bad as it is for the environment, its draining Middle Eastern airlines that operate in the EU while having a minimal impact on domestic EU airlines. Adopting a system where airlines can just pay to maintain their slots would impact EU and non-EU airlines equally – something that goes against the EU’s goals with the system.
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