Court ruling revives slots debate

Date: 08/04/1999

A RECENT decision by the English high court has provided the first formal interpretation of the six-year-old EU law governing the allocation of take-off and landing slots.

The court ruled that while the outright sale of slots was not allowed, they could be exchanged - even in cases where money changes hands.

” This is the first clarification by any competent court of the slot code of conduct,” says Trevor Soames, an aviation lawyer with Norton Rose in Brussels. “The Commission has argued that slot sales are prohibited within Europe, but the regulation does not specify this.”

The case involved slots allocated to Air UK, now known as KLM UK (a subsidiary of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines), which discontinued its unprofitable service between London Heathrow and Guernsey in 1997, opting instead to concentrate services at Stansted, north-east of London.

In return for relinquishing its Guernsey slots, Air UK received an equal number of Heathrow slots from BA. This was frowned upon by administrative authorities in Guernsey, which disputed BA's decision not to use the Heathrow slots for flying to and from the island.

However, the court rejected claims that the slots trade violated the 1993 EU law requiring that they be allocated by “the proper authority”, and held that the slots concerned were “freely exchanged” between Air UK and BA.