London Heathrow Slot Allocation
- London Heathrow Slot Allocation Plan
- London Heathrow Slot Allocation Tool
- London Heathrow Slot Allocation Tool
Whilst the cost of landing at Heathrow is determined by the CAA and Heathrow Airport Holdings, the allocation of landing slots to airlines is carried out by Airport Co-ordination Limited (ACL). 22 Until 2008, air traffic between Heathrow and the United States was strictly governed by the countries' bilateral Bermuda II treaty. Reform of slot allocation rules vital for Virgin’s Heathrow expansion plans 30 / 09 / 2019 Dominic Kennedy, managing director, cargo at Virgin Atlantic, said: “Our volumes grew 6% in 2018 to their highest level since 2010 and we know customers would give us a.
Take-off and landing slots at London’s Heathrow airport. These mysterious entities dictate just about everything we do as an airline and determine the timings of every one of your flights. To find out more we spoke to a world expert on airline slots. Fortunately, we didn't have to go far, he works right here at Virgin Atlantic.
David Hill is our head of Heathrow expansion. For most of his career he has worked in commercial planning, working out how to make the best use of our fleet, where we should fly, how often and on what size and type of aircraft. David has also spent five years working for Airport Coordination Limited (ACL), the organization responsible for slot allocation. ACL work with airports and airlines to make the most efficient use of capacity. They allocate and regulate slots for many of the world’s airports, including most of the UK. Few people know as much about airport capacity and slot control as David. Like everything in aviation, the deeper you delve, the more complicated it becomes.
As far as pieces of real estate go, the two runways at Heathrow have to be among the most expensive pieces of concrete on planet Earth. Imagine buying a house for several million pounds only to discover you can only live there for 90 seconds a day. That’s the deal with Heathrow’s two runways, which are so in demand a whole industry exists to decide who spends a few precious seconds on them. With David’s expert knowledge we’ve compiled this Heathrow slots guide:
What are they?
The idea of slots is quite new. Wind the clock back just 20 or 30 years and airports generally weren’t busy enough to need them. But growth in aviation and pressure on the airports, particularly in the South East of England, demanded a clever solution. A slot is defined as ‘permission to use the full range of airport infrastructure necessary to operate an air service on a specific date and time for the purpose of landing or taking off’. That includes not just the runway but the terminal building, the taxiiways, parking stands and departure gates.
Slot regulation in the UK is currently governed by EU regulations and are informed by IATA’s Worldwide Slot Guidelines. The UK government is currently looking at how new Heathrow slots should be allocated to enhance competition at the airport Not every airport needs to use them. They’re granted by ACL twice a year for summer and winter flying, and an airline is allowed to continue using a slot on the condition that they have flown at least 80% of the previous allocation (this is called ‘grandfather rights’). Too many cancellations and an airline risks losing their precious slot. On average we fly more than 97% of ours.
Are slots used at all airports?
No. There are three different categories of airport in the UK.
Level 1. At a small airport like Bournemouth, you can fly into and out whenever you like (as long as they are open).
Level 2 are mid-size airports such as Belfast. These need a bit of coordination but generally you can just call and let them know your arrival or departure time. They may ask you to move your time a small amount depending on how busy they are, but the airline can chose to still operate at their requested time if that is their only option.
Level 3 are the big airports like Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted or Manchester who are fully slot coordinated.
What determines the number of slots?
You can clearly see the wake vortex behind this landing aircraft. Photo by Bernal Saborio Flickr
The number of flights that can land on a runway is determined by the wake vortex of the aircraft. This is the air that gets churned up by the aircraft moving through the sky. The bigger the aircraft, the greater the wake vortex which means the gap after an arriving Airbus A380 has to be longer than after a much smaller Boeing 737. It gets more complicated. The A380 being bigger, is better able to cope with vortex so can fly a bit closer to the aircraft in front. On Heathrow’s runways it all averages out to about one flight landing or taking off every 90 seconds on each runway.
What is the problem at Heathrow?
Heathrow is the world’s busiest two-runway airport and the short answer is that it’s full. With over 470,000 flights a year Heathrow does an incredible job with the two runways it has. By comparison Amsterdam has six runways and JFK in New York has four, yet they both have roughly the same number of flights as Heathrow.
What Heathrow does so well is keep the landing rates up in all but the most extreme weather. In 2015, after three years of research, Heathrow became the first airport in the world to use something called time based separation which allows it to regulate the flights even more efficiently in differing wind conditions. They found that in strong winds, those vortexes we spoke of earlier decayed much quicker. This meant they could shorten the gap between landings. It’s this sort of innovation that is going on all the time to try and take the pressure off the runways, but despite everything, Heathrow really can’t take any more.
One city, three busy runways
The need for more capacity in the south east is borne out by London not only having the world’s busiest two-runway airport, but across town, Gatwick is the world’s busiest single-runway airport. Because Gatwick’s single runway is used for both take offs and landings, they achieve more movements from their one runway. (That’s all to do with those wake vortexes. A departing aircraft’s wake vortex won’t affect an arriving aircraft).
Our flight from San Francisco comes into land at Heathrow, over the London skyline.
Night slots
There’s a night jet ban at Heathrow between 11.30pm and 04.30am. Only 16 aircraft are then allowed to land between 04.30 and 06.00, when the runways are fully opened again. We hold one of those slots, normally for our early morning Hong Kong arrival. A (very) few exceptions allow departures after the night ban at 11.30pm.
During the day every single slot is used. The NATS controllers do an extraordinary job and we all recognise their hard work. Our pilots also have a part to play. Each landing is carefully planned in advance to account for the weather on landing and the optimum braking needed to vacate the runway at the earliest safe turn off. Knowing their intentions in advance also helps the controllers to sequence in the aircraft. An awful lot goes into those seconds you spend on the runway.
Trading slots
Perhaps the biggest surprise is the fact that airlines can sell their slots. Often for a huge amount of money. Before an airline can trade slots they need to show they have the grandfather rights, which means they have to have operated them for at least two years. If you no longer need a slot at a quieter airport like Manchester you would just give them back to ACL, but at Heathrow, of course, it’s a different story. All Heathrow slots are worth big money, with the most expensive ones being for early morning arrivals and lunchtime departures. These fetch an eye watering premium. You can also ask ACL to retime your slots or swap them with other airlines. What you are buying is the ability to fly to Heathrow so if your business case stacks up it can make sense to do this.
Heathrow expansion
That all brings us back to the third runway at Heathrow and how it’s going to affect slot allocation. The idea is that when it’s fully operational, one runway will operate like Gatwick’s mixed mode runway, with both take offs and landings. The other two will operate as they do now, with one dedicated to landings and one for takeoffs. It’ll probably take some time after the runway is built before it’s used to its full potential. As well as the runway, Heathrow will have to build one or two new terminals and plenty of aircraft parking spaces, and the air traffic controllers will have to build up slowly to full operations.
We think the third runway at Heathrow is a golden opportunity for us to become the nation’s second flag carrier. Our new, quieter and more efficient fleet makes us ideal neighbours at Heathrow – find out more about our plans here.
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
A new governing structure over the way airport slots are allocated and managed has been agreed upon by three industry associations. It is hoped that this arrangement will benefit passengers as air travel increases and more airports feel the pressure of demand.
The agreement came at a meeting in Seoul, South Korea, and sees Airports Council International (ACI) World, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), and the Worldwide Airport Coordinators Group (WWACG) agreeing to the new structure for the Worldwide Slot Guidelines (WSG) — a set of standards published by IATA for the management of airport slots.
What are airport slots?
A slot is simply defined as a landing or departure time at an airport. It is allocated to an airline for a particular flight at a particular time, and helps airports manage their runway capacity and available space at the terminal gates so that operations do not become too crowded. It is also a useful way of limiting an airport’s effect on its neighbors and the environment.
London Heathrow Slot Allocation Plan
Slots are particularly common at busy airports where the supply of available takeoff and landing times is outstripped by demand from airlines who want to operate flights (which in turn are usually driven by demand from passengers or intense competition over routes). Such airports are classified as 'slot-constrained,' and at present there are around 200 such examples globally.
In these examples where demand is higher than the available number of slots, an allocation process is implemented, which should ensure a fair and non-discriminatory way of giving airlines access to an airport.
London Heathrow Slot Allocation Tool
How will slot allocation change
Under the new collaboration, airports, airlines and slot coordinators will work together equally to determine slot allocation. The purpose is to modernize the system that has been put under strain as more airports become slot-constrained.
'For more than 40 years, the Worldwide Slots Guidelines has managed scarce airport capacity fairly, transparently and independently,' said IATA Director General and CEO Alexandre de Juniac.
'This has enabled airlines to make network investments with certainty. But more importantly it has benefitted consumers by ensuring schedule reliability while enhancing competition by providing opportunities for new entrants in even the most congested airports.' He added: 'By working together with ACI and WWACG, the time-tested WSG will become even more responsive to evolving market needs.'
With air travel set to double by 2030, and another 100 airports expected to become slot-constrained, this is seen as the right time to improve the system for the benefit of passengers and to provide more transparency in what is often seen as the shady world of slot allocation. How it will pan out in reality is yet to be seen.
At airports like London Heathrow, slots are often traded between airlines or sold for tens of millions, or even used to benefit partners in airline alliances. New entrants can often end up priced out of starting services to these airports, and shorter regional routes using smaller aircraft can rarely make a profit when slots demand such a premium.
London Heathrow Slot Allocation Tool
The new guidance also must go hand-in-hand with busy airports modernizing their infrastructure to provide capacity for airlines and passengers.
De Juniac added: 'It is vital that policy-makers remember insufficient capacity to meet demand forfeits economic opportunities. The new WSG governance will make the best use of what we have — but it is no substitute for investing in modern airports and air traffic management.'
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