General principles

  • What is an airport slot: The term "airport slot" refers to the scheduled time of arrival or departure available or allocated to an aircraft on a specific date at a coordinated airport (EU Regulation 95/93, art. 2).
  • Airport Slot-Coordination deals only with the allocation of airport slots (no ATC-slots) and is independent of traffic rights.
  • In order to operate into and out of a coordinated airport, airlines and general/business aviation must have an airport slot allocated.
  • The coordinator / facilitator have to be independent of any single stakeholder in the aviation industry and shall act according to EU regulation 95/93 in a neutral, non-discriminatory and transparent way.
  • Airport slots are allocated on the basis of defined capacity-parameters, established by airport operators after consultation of the airport users and the coordinators.
  • One of the basic principles of the airport slot allocation process is historical precedence, which allows airlines to retain airport slots, which have been allocated to them (and have been utilized 80% at least), in the next equivalent scheduling season.
  • Priority rules like "new entrant status", “effective period of operation”, “frequency of operation” etc. do exist.
  • In general, an airline is allowed to transfer an allocated airport slot from one route to another route, or exchange an allocated airport slot with an allocated airport slot of another carrier on a one by one basis. All airport slot exchanges require explicit confirmation by the coordinator.
  • At level 2 airports the function of the coordinator is more that of a schedule facilitator, who is gathering the data of all planned operations and in case of congestion exceeding the capacity limits proposing voluntary schedule adjustments. In Austria, all airports are handled strictly according to the coordination rules.
  • Response to airport slot allocation requests will be given within a period of 3 business days. Unless stated otherwise, clearance offers from coordinators to the airlines are valid for 3 business days only. If an airline has not accepted the offer within the 3-day time limit, the coordinator is entitled to cancel the offer.
  • All coordination activities are handled in UTC.