EU allows sale of airport slots
05.05.08
The European Commission has adopted a document that allows airlines to trade take-off and landing slots among themselves for the first time, in a bid to overcome capacity constraints at Europe's crowded airports. It has issued a directive allowing European airlines to buy and sell the takeoff and landing slots that they do not use from each other.
Previous legislation only allowed slots to be exchanged ‘one for one between airlines, without monetary compensation’. But the vagueness of the rules enabled certain airports, such as Heathrow, to put in place a ‘grey market’ for secondary slot trading.
According to the new directive, the slots can be sold by the airlines to whom they were assigned, swapped within the airline's code-sharing agreement, or used to buy services. Adopted on April 30, it finds that existing EU legislation on airport slot allocation does not prohibit so-called ‘secondary slot trading,’ bringing an end to years of debate on the issue.
EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot said: ‘Today we are recognising for the first time that secondary slot trading is an acceptable way of allowing them to be swapped among airlines.' It is now expected that airlines will include the slots on their balance sheets.
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