Airport slots

By This Is Money
Updated:

 

The Daily Mail City team explains what airport slots are - and what is going on in the sector.

What are they?

Take off and landing slots are rights allocated to airlines by an airport or government agency that allow the owner to schedule flight arrivals and departures during a specific time period.

In Britain, the allocation of landing slots at four UK airports - Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, and Manchester - is carried out by Airport Co-ordination Limited, a non-profit organisation.

ACL is funded by ten British airlines, tourism operators and airport owner BAA. They pay the ACL a fee for providing scheduling information.

How does it work?

Slot ownership has become quite lucrative at busy airports such as Heathrow and New York's JFK International.

Peak slots - early morning arrivals, and midday departures - at these airports are in huge demand because major airlines cannot expand services without the relevant take off and landing rights.

At Heathrow a pair of slots were recently bought by US carrier Continental for a reputed £30m.

Why do we care?

EasyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou believes the £72.4m value the airline has placed on its slots at Gatwick is too high.

Gatwick is the busiest single runway airport in the world, but airlines have recently been transferring services from there to Heathrow, freeing up slots.

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