Coronavirus is affecting badly aviation sector and some airlines in bid to keep their slots at strategic airports are flying empty planes.
Virgin Atlantic was one of the first that admitted flying “ghost planes” to try to retain take-off and landing slots at major airports such as Heathrow. Under European law, if flights are not operated, slots have to be forfeited.
UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has written to the European Commission, asking for rules on slot allocation to be relaxed during the outbreak. Other carriers are thought to be taking similar steps – even reportedly flying so-called “ghost planes” with no passengers on board at all in order to safeguard their presence at major hubs.
Slots are granted according to historical rights at these airports. If, for example, a carrier operated a particular schedule through the summer season last year, it retains the right to those same slots this summer. But there is a catch. Under the “use it or lose it” rule, slots have to be used at least 80% of the time. If an airline fails to reach that threshold, the slots are put back into a pool and allocated to other carriers.
Although they are technically granted for free, there is a thriving secondary market on which the most desirable slots can change hands for significant sums – tens of millions of pounds across a season. So airlines are very reluctant to lose them.
The rule has already been suspended on routes to China and Hong Kong, but still applies elsewhere. However, EU has announced they plan to waive this rule during the Coronavirus to help airlines maintain their businesses.
The European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “The coronavirus outbreak has a major impact on the European and international aviation industry. We see that the situation is deteriorating on a daily basis, and traffic is expected to decline further. And this is why the commission will put forward very rapidly legislation regarding the so-called airport slots,”
“We want to make it easier for airlines to keep their airport slot, even if they do not operate flights in those slots, because of the declining traffic.”
Von der Leyen said it was a temporary measure aimed at helping the industry and environment. “It will relieve the pressure on the aviation industry and in particular on smaller airline companies, but it will also decrease emissions by avoiding the so called ghost flights. When airlines fly, almost empty planes, simply to keep that slot.”
