6Slot Availability
A landing/takeoff slot is a right granted by an airport authority to airlines interested in serving this airport (De Boe 2005; Condorelli 2007). The right allows the slot holder to schedule a flight landing or a departure during a specific time period. The International Air Transport Association (IATA), through its Worldwide Airport Slots Group, develops the procedure according to which the landing slots are allocated to airlines and other operators using or plan to use the airport. Slot allocation becomes critical in case the airport has limited capacity. In this situation, some coordination is required between the airport authority and the different airlines that are using or plan to use the airport. The prime objective of this coordination is to ensure the most efficient use of airport infrastructure to maximize benefits to the airlines (De Wit and Burghouwt 2008; Madas and Zografos 2008; Santos and Robin 2010).
The IATA’s Worldwide Airport Slots Group periodically publishes what is known as the Worldwide Slot Guidelines (WSG), which gives detailed description of the slot allocation procedure at the different airports (IATA 2017). We encourage the readers of this chapter to refer to the most recent IATA’s WSG to get the most recent information on slot allocation practice (IATA 2017). This chapter highlights the main relevant aspects of slot allocation to airline network planning. Given the legal and commercial nature of the slot allocation practice, this ...
Get Airline Network Planning and Scheduling now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
