Back in July last year, I wrote about the dangers of the European Commission insisting on too high a threshold for airlines retaining their slots this winter (October 2021-March 2022). At the time, the Commission was proposing a 60% use-threshold to retain slots, instead of the normal 80%. Seeing the volatility in passenger demand—almost solely owing to government-imposed travel restrictions—we argued for greater flexibility and a vastly lower threshold. At the same time other regulators extended much more comprehensive slot alleviation rules for the Winter. The EC ultimately reduced the threshold to 50%.
Data from Eurocontrol (Daily Traffic Variation – AOs (eurocontrol.int)) has been invaluable during this crisis and shows the extreme nature of the impact of the virus on airlines. In 2021, the 36 airlines listed in the data collectively operated just 50.9% of the flights operated in 2019. The figure for 2020 was only 40.9%. All the passenger…