Airplanes with empty seats, distance to fellow passengers is not a problem - passengers had this experience especially at the beginning of the corona pandemic.

Airlines are now facing another phase in which the economic and even more the ecological balance of their kerosene-fueled aircraft is poor.

But they start anyway.

The reason: If airlines leave the tight start time windows (slots), especially at large airports, unused, they run the risk of losing them - permanently.

Timo Kotowski

Editor in business.

  • Follow I follow

Due to the spread of the Omikron variant of the coronavirus and falling bookings, Carsten Spohr, CEO of Deutsche Lufthansa, has announced that 33,000 flights will be taken off the plan for the next few weeks and months.

Apparently more is not possible if Lufthansa wants to avert the loss of slots.

The group would have liked to cut 18,000 more connections, Lufthansa is talking about "senseless" flights that should take off anyway.

And the slot trouble is not only threatening to become a side effect of winter, the EU Commission has already decided on rules for the start time windows in spring and summer 2022 - to the displeasure of parts of the industry.

"Use or lose the slot"

Basically, if an airline has a 15-minute slot for a take-off or landing, it can keep it permanently if it uses the time slot in at least 80 percent of the cases. The following applies: "Use it or lose it." Use or lose the slot. At the beginning of the pandemic, the EU Commission suspended the rule due to the slump in traffic. Network companies like Lufthansa, which rely on a combination of long-haul and short-haul feeders, thanked them. Low-cost airlines like Ryanair opposed and stated that they would have liked to collect slots for their own greater future and that the EU bureaucracy prevented them from doing so.

The rule now applies that an airline must use 50 percent instead of 80 percent slots in order to keep them. Brussels also planned a stepped route back to flight normality - which means less normality in passenger numbers than normality in terms of competition rules. Two weeks ago, the EU Commission announced that at the end of March, when the airlines' summer flight plans are due to come into force, the threshold for slot retention will be raised from 50 to 64 percent.

The authority pointed out that in some summer months in 2021, the flight volume reached 70 percent of the level of 2019.

And the Eurocontrol air traffic control is forecasting more for 2022.

EU Transport Commissioner Adina Vălean said that she was aware of aviation concerns about the Omikron variant and the recent slump in bookings.

However, during the Covid 19 crisis, the Commission showed the will and ability to act quickly if necessary.

Aviation divided on EU rules

A diplomatically circumscribed back door remains to reconsider the decision.

But Vălean also stated: "The vaccination progress and the EU Covid-19 digital certificate have helped restore the confidence of travelers and air connections in the EU and have placed the industry in a stronger position to deal with short-term shocks."

Lufthansa boss Spohr criticized the falling number of bookings.

"While climate-friendly exemptions were found for this in almost all other parts of the world during the time of the pandemic, the EU does not allow this in the same way," he complained in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

The Brussels rules are harmful to the climate and are "exactly the opposite of what the EU Commission wants to achieve with its 'Fit for 55' program".

The airport association ACI Europe welcomed the 64 percent rule from the end of March as an "essential and fully justified step" towards normal slot rules that should apply again in winter 2022, ACI managing director Olivier Jankovec said the commission's decision reflected one “New reality” in the aviation market, where some airlines have structurally shrunk while others are looking for expansion opportunities. Put simply: the airports, which are just as suffering in the crisis, would also be happy to take new routes from growing airlines if they could receive more passengers and thus more revenue more quickly.

The international airline association IATA, which has more or less polluted lines among its members, held back and only said that the EU rules for 2022 would give airlines planning security.

Rather, it was argued that states should - as soon as possible - relax travel restrictions in order to allow for more demand.

Meanwhile, it is unclear how great the desire for abandoned slots would be.

In 2020, Lufthansa was required to give up some time slots in Munich and Frankfurt for its rescue package.

Nothing followed from this yet.

There were no interested parties for the slots.

However, so far only "new competitors" have been allowed to register.