Next summer and autumn, 24 fewer airlines will fly to and from Schiphol. This has become clear after the allocation of aircraft slots, the times at which airlines are allowed to take off and land at the airport. The number of slots must be reduced to make the planned shrinkage of Schiphol possible.
The redistribution of the number of slots for the period from March to October means that the 84 airlines that use Schiphol will have 3.1 percent fewer landing and take-off times. This is what Hugo Thomassen, the so-called slot coordinator for Schiphol, among others, tells us.
“In total, there are 9,100 fewer slots during that period. For Air France-KLM, which has almost two-thirds of those slots, this means that they are allowed to take off and/or land 5,700 times less,” Thomassen explains.
“For us, this reduction equates to approximately seventeen fewer flights per day”
KLM is not happy with the reduction: “We are disappointed with the number of allocated slots. For us, this reduction equates to approximately seventeen fewer flights per day.” The company is involved in a lengthy lawsuit about the contraction planned by the government from Schiphol.
From April next year, the airport must reduce to 460,000 flights per year, followed by almost eight thousand in November. KLM and other airlines are trying to prevent this through the courts.
Court case
The way in which this shrinkage is regulated would not be legal. However, the State was right both at the regular trial and on appeal. The so-called ‘cassation case’ that is still ongoing is the last chance to stop the shrinkage.
For no fewer than 24 airlines, the reduction means that they will no longer be able to fly to Schiphol at all from the summer onwards. Thomassen: “Airplanes that do not have a ‘historical right’ (see box) to the slots they currently have will not receive that slot at all in the next period. The process itself, by the way, follows the rules.”
Historical law
A company is historically entitled to a flight slot if they actually use it in at least eighty percent of the slots. An exaggerated example: if you have the right to land at 11 a.m. every morning, but you only use that option half the days, you don’t build up a historical right to that slot. This means you automatically lose that slot in the next time slot.
What is special about the new slot distribution is that for the first time a number of ‘historical slots’ will not be allocated. That is normally the case. These slots are disappearing to allow for the airport to shrink.
One of those companies is the American JetBlue, which only starts from flies to Schiphol in August. They already saw the storm brewing and a few weeks ago asked the American Department of Transport to take revenge in that case by banning KLM from New York’s JFK airport. According to JetBlue, the announced shrinkage of Schiphol is contrary to international agreements.
According to De Telegraaf the American ministry repeated the threat at the end of last month in a letter to the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, should American airlines lose their landing and take-off rights.