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IATA campaigns for slot relief for carriers worldwide
March 6th 2020
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has called for rules around the use of take-off and landing slots to be suspended in 2020 because of the coronavirus outbreak. Read More »
The association’s request for action on slots was made as airlines worldwide were dramatically scaling back flights in response to the sharp decline in demand prompted by the spread of the COVID-19 virus beyond Asia.
On Monday IATA said in a statement examples of the impact of COVID-19 on aviation included an airline cutting its operations by 26% compared with a year ago, the collapse of bookings to Italy and a no-show rate of up to 50% in several markets.
Airlines have also called on pilots, cabin crew and ground staff to take unpaid leave as part of efforts to deal with the financial impact of COVID-19 on their bottom lines.
Airlines that may be forced to operate less than 80% of their allocated slots at slot-controlled airports needed to maintain their right to keep the slots for the following season, IATA said. This rule could be relaxed in exceptional circumstances.
While regulators have introduced waivers for airlines operating into Hong Kong and China, IATA said suspending the requirement for the entire season, which runs until the final week of October 2020, would allow airlines to respond to market conditions with appropriate capacity levels and avoid the need to run empty services to retain slots.
“IATA research has shown traffic has collapsed on key Asian routes and that this is rippling through the air transport network globally, even between countries without major outbreaks of COVID-19," IATA CEO and director general, Alexandre de Juniac, said.
"There are precedents for previous suspension of the slot use rules and we believe the circumstances again call for a suspension to be granted.
"We are calling for regulators worldwide to help the industry plan for today’s emergency and the future recovery of the network, by suspending the slot use rules on a temporary basis," he said.
IATA said about 43% of passengers departed from about 200 slot-coordinated airports around the world. Figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO) showed that as of Thursday, there were 93,090 confirmed cases of people diagnosed with COVID-19 in 77 countries and 3,198 have died from the disease.
