MEPs agree to bend airport slot rules to help crisis-hit airlines 

The House's transport committee backed, on 21 April, a Commission proposal  to temporarily freeze the EU's 'use it or lose it' rule, which allows an airline to keep landing slots at the Union's airports from one season to the next provided that it uses at least 80% of them effectively. 

The original draft report  by Italian Liberal MEP Paolo Costa was considerably amended. The MEPs rejected the rapporteur's proposals to lower the current 80% threshold to 75% for summer 2009, and to allow airlines to retain unused slots only if there is no demand for the slots and the same routes from another carrier.

Extension of exemption measures

But any extension of such exemptions should be conditional on a full revision of the EU's Slots Regulation, said the European Parliament's transport committee.

While MEPs agreed that the Commission could table a proposal to renew part of the temporary measures for the winter season, they refused to let this be decided by 'comitology', a procedure that delegates decision-making to the EU executive but leaves the Parliament without a say. Instead, MEPs insisted that the Commission must draw up a revised regulation to determine future slot allocations: a process whereby the Parliament has a major input as co-legislator.

Final adoption in early May

Following the committee vote, the Czech EU Presidency and representatives of the Parliament and the Commission held so-called 'trialogue' meetings on 22 April. According to sources, the outcome of the committee vote "should be OK" for the Council as well. 

Meanwhile, the Commission finds it "unacceptable" that MEPs have made their backing of the proposal conditional on an overall revision of the whole regulation.

Member-state representatives meeting yesterday (23 April) were scheduled to further discuss the text agreed upon by the transport committee. Talks were due to focus on whether the Parliament's call for the Commission to revise the Slots Regulation should be considered binding or not. 

The Parliament plenary vote is scheduled for 5 May.

Fabio Gamba, deputy secretary-general of the Association of European Airlines (AEA), welcomed the Parliament committee's backing regarding an exemption for the 2009 summer period, but hoped that the extension of the exemption would not be automatically linked to the need to revise the whole Slots Regulation, which would be a "bad use of resources".

On the contrary, Jonathan Breeze, chief executive of private jet company Jet Republic, said "it is high time for a thorough overhaul of the current EU rules on slot allocation to provide fair access to airports for new entrants, such as those entering the business aviation market and providing the flexible services which are needed to boost trade in Europe". 

While the Airports Council International (ACI) said it was unhappy with the result, it supported the restrictions put on future prolongation of the exemption. 

ACI director general Olivier Jankovec said the exemption "is not a legitimate crisis relief measure for the whole aviation industry," but an "anti-competitive measure that only benefits some incumbent airlines". 

It will affect the internal market and lead to less traffic and revenues for all airports, both big, heavily congested ones and smaller regional ones, he argued. Furthermore, passengers will suffer from cancellations, Jankovec added.