Air Transport

European regulators have formally acknowledged, for the first time, the potential value of secondary slot-trading between airlines, in a clarification of current slot regulations.

The European Commission has effectively been forced to recognise the practice of slot-trading which has long been prevalent in the market, although carried out unofficially.

"Slots at airports must be distributed in a fair and non-discriminatory way," says European transport commissioner Jacques Barrot.

"Today we are recognising for the first time that secondary trading is an acceptable way of allowing slots to be swapped among airlines. We will keep a close eye on the situation across Europe and ensure secondary trading works to the advantage of consumers."

Barrot says slot-trading has "already shown its value" through the arrangements made by transatlantic carriers as they jostled for slots at London Heathrow to take advantage of the US-European open skies agreement.

The Commission has wrestled with unofficial slot-trading for years but guidance on the practice has yet to emerge, partly because there is still confusion over the implementation of current slot-allocation regulation.

This regulation was revised in 2004 to provide easier access for new-entrant carriers, and was reviewed last year. Carriers and airport operators took part in this review and put their opinions forward at a stakeholder dialogue in Brussels in January.

Although stakeholders broadly agreed that the slot regulation had improved the functioning of the market, they thought some parts of the regulation were still not being fully, correctly or uniformly implemented.

They said there was an urgent need to clarify particular issues, such as secondary slot-trading, the independence of co-ordinators, transparency, and rules governing new entrants.

The Commission, in response, resolved to concentrate on ensuring better implementation of the regulation and said it would lay out a clarification, particularly over slot-trading.

In releasing this clarification today, Barrot says the Commission is "signalling the acceptance" of slot-trading, and adds: "At crowded airports, we need to make sure slots are used as efficiently as possible and that airlines have a fair chance to develop their operations."