IATA, ACI Europe Loudly Differ On Airport Capacity Approach

The separate associations representing global airlines and European airports are in vocal opposition on the problem of squeezed airport capacity, after ACI Europe said IATA’s assumption that airports were not doing enough with their existing infrastructure was “ludicrous.”

On Dec. 18, IATA published a white paper entitled “Future Airport Slot Policy and the Airline Industry” in which it warned that the airport capacity crunch was threatening people’s freedom to travel and constrained economies. The organization put forward proposals on how slot regulations should incentivize 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,” IATA said. “If current trends prevail, this number could grow by 25% over the next decade.”

“The only cure for insufficient capacity is construction. But as long as large-scale endeavors 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,” said Nick Careen, IATA’s SVP for operations, safety and security. “Some airports set strong benchmarks for maximizing capacity, but too many fail to follow the guidance in the Worldwide Airport Slot Guidelines.”

The white paper called for modifications to slot regulations that will hold airports accountable if they are not doing enough to create more capacity.

“Under the slot regulations, airlines are obliged to utilize the slots they are granted efficiently or face penalties for canceling 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,” Careen said. “This needs a major rebalancing so that airports and airlines are equally obliged to maximize the potential social and economic value of airport capacity.”

IATA said it wanted airports to be required to review their capacity declarations on a regular basis, and implement a meaningful capacity consultation process, to ensure greater transparency and reveal where potential capacity increases are being neglected.

It also called for obligations to improve and increase capacity where possible, benchmarked against global best practice and consequences if declared capacity is not delivered as promised.

ACI Europe, however, pointed to “misconceptions” in IATA’s comments, saying the organization was shifting blame onto other stakeholders. But ACI Europe did agree with IATA that the airport capacity crunch had returned in full force since the pandemic, a situation which it said is undermining EU efforts to address its competitiveness gap, as highlighted by the recent European Commission-backed report on the future of European competitiveness compiled by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.

ACI Europe said EU airport slot regulation needed to be modernized to ease the problem.

“IATA’s assumption that many airports are not doing enough to squeeze more capacity out of their existing infrastructure is ludicrous,” ACI Europe Director General Olivier Jankovec said. “Airports are responsible and economically driven businesses—with both their business and social mandates resulting in a strong focus on maximizing the use of their facilities.”

ACI Europe said airports have limited control over how their capacity is used by airlines, “leading at present to significant capacity wastage. This harms connectivity and prevents competitor airlines from utilizing that latent capacity—a situation stemming from a 30-years-old EU Airport Slot Regulation which urgently needs to be revisited. The Draghi report correctly identifies the impediments to competitiveness caused by this outdated legislation.”

Jankovec added: “Airlines should rather focus their efforts on the numerous ways they can directly improve airport capacity use—such as returning unused slots to the pool more quickly and refraining from hoarding slots that could otherwise be utilized.”