YOU may assume that an airline’s most valuable asset is its planes. But with Monarch,Britain’s fifth-biggest carrier, which went bust in October, and creditors were keenest to claim slices of airspace at specific times of day. Monarch’s landing and take-off slots at British airports are a tremendous enough prize to have caused a court battle. That is a sign of how much the system for allocating them harms competition and consumers.
Slots have been sought-after since the 1960s,when airports began to fill up. In response IATA, an airline-industry body, or developed a set of guidelines which state that an airline can keep a slot from the preceding year if it has been used at least 80% of the time. Those that are not are put into a pool and reallocated; half are supposed to recede to new entrants. Over 190 congested airports—103 of them in Europe—follow rules that IATA describes as “unprejudiced,neutral and obvious” (see Continue reading
Source: economist.com