The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has resorted to hyperbole to warn that the airport capacity crunch is “threatening the freedom for people to travel” and constraining economies. While people are still free to travel whenever they want to for the most part, IATA says more capacity is necessary. IATA released a White Paper including proposals for how slot regulations must incentivise airports to generate more capacity from existing infrastructure.
The number of airports unable to fully meet the demand for air connectivity and requiring slot coordination using the IATA Worldwide Airport Slot Guidelines has already grown to nearly 400 worldwide. If current trends prevail, this number could grow by 25% over the next decade.
An example of the severe consequences of this growing problem is evident in Europe where Airports Council International (ACI) Europe expects that airport infrastructure will be unable to meet up to 12% of demand in 2050. With large scale airport developments, especially new runways, unlikely to be built due to political constraints, this will further undermine Europe’s competitiveness which, as the Draghi report has concluded, is already significantly under-performing. It is therefore vital that airports deploy best practice to deliver as much capacity from existing infrastructure as possible, IATA said.
“The only cure for insufficient capacity is construction. But as long as large-scale endeavours such as building new runways or terminals remain politically out-of-reach in many parts of the world, we must squeeze every last unit of capacity out of the infrastructure we have. Some airports set strong benchmarks for maximizing capacity, but too many fail to follow the guidance in the Worldwide Airport Slot Guidelines,” said Nick Careen, IATA’s SVP for Operations, Safety and Security.
The newly published IATA White Paper on airport slots calls for stronger obligations on the part of airports to maximise capacity.
“Under the slot regulations, airlines are obliged to utilise the slots they are granted efficiently or face penalties for cancelling flights, or not operating to schedule. But airports face no penalties if they don’t deliver promised capacity. They have little pressure to meet global benchmarks on efficiency. Moreover, there is often insufficient transparency for the capacity declarations that they do make. This needs a major rebalancing so that airports and airlines are equally obliged to maximise the potential social and economic value of airport capacity,” said Careen.
Specifically, IATA calls for modifications to slot regulations that will hold airports to account if they are not doing enough to create more capacity, including:
- Requiring airports to review their capacity declarations on a regular basis, and implementing a meaningful capacity consultation process, to ensure greater transparency and reveal where potential capacity increases are being neglected.
- Obligations to improve and increase capacity where possible, benchmarked against global best practice.
- Consequences if declared capacity is not delivered as promised.
“The current airport slots regulations have helped create a global air transport network which delivers ever-increasing connectivity, consumer choice, and cheaper fares. For the slot system to continue growing these benefits, we need performance obligations on airports. Stronger regulation is needed to close the enormous gap between the best and the mediocre airports in delivering capacity. That will give better service to passengers with greater accessibility to air transport and bring more benefits to the world,” said Careen.
Or on the other hand, in order to be more sustainable, people could fly less, thus negating the need for bigger airports, more flights and ever increasing amounts of fuel. Despite what IATA says, people are always “free to travel”.
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