Slots at airports are a looming disruptor to the bright future for the air cargo industry, IATA officials have said.

Already-full airports will face even bigger problems as the number of aircraft in service is set to double in the next 20 years, with freighters alone set to increase by 70% or some 3,000 planes. However, airport development remains well behind as governments worldwide are reluctant to spend big on solving the problem by building not just runways, but related facilities as well.

“There is simply not going to be enough capacity to meet the needs of the industry,” says Lara Maughan, IATA’s head for worldwide airport slots. “We are going to see chaos.”

That chaos is actually happening now, as shown by the degree of slot coordination already occurring.

Slot coordination does not refer to air traffic rights but to permission to use airport infrastructure. Coordination is a short-term solution to the long-term problem of a lack of facilities, but already its limits are showing and will continue to do so in the coming years.

At of the end of November, there were 189 slot-coordinated Level 3 airports, of which 103 are in Europe. However, this cannot be dismissed as a European problem, as China already has 21 slot-coordinated airports. Globally, there are 122 Level 2 airports where there is still significant congestion, but less so.

Asia’s cargo sector is not immune to the problem. Thirteen of the world’s top 20 cargo airports are already slot-coordinated; nine of those are in Asia and the Middle East, including Beijing Capital, Hong Kong, Shanghai Pudong, Incheon, Taipei, Tokyo Narita, Singapore, Guangzhou and Dubai International.

Two sectors are particularly vulnerable to slot controls. One is perishables where, for example, an airport like Oslo, which needs to coordinate seafood exports with receiving airports in Japan and China. Such need for coordination “highlights the complexity” of the job, said Maughan.

The other is the express parcel business, where even five minutes can be critical. As e-commerce grows, it may be a particularly big bottleneck just waiting to happen.  

The real concern is that coordination – the short-term measure – is becoming more prevalent, even in an era when new airports are not being built. IATA predicts 100 more coordinated airports in 10 years, Maughan said. Not only is that a 50% increase on the current levels, but it is also a best-case scenario, where the worst one allows for as many as 300 slot-coordinated airports in a decade.

For cargo, slots create extra problems, including the ability to respond to unplanned demand, getting fair and equal access, night curfews and ensuring punctuality for high-value but time-specific shipments.

One possible solution to help insure cargo gets its rights is an independent slot coordinator who owes no airline, neither side of the industry, and no particular facilities any favours, who could deliver fair and equal access.

This is complicated by the issue of night curfews, which is itself compounded by older cargo aircraft being are noisier and by the shortage of slots which occur on a casual basis as airports become increasingly busy.

“One of the growing challenges is the lack of ad hoc slots for demand-driven markets,” said Maughan, who mentioned Hong Kong as an airport “critically full” while being the busiest air cargo hub in the world.

IATA’s response to this cocktail of problems is incremental and piecemeal while lobbying governments to build more airports and other related facilities.

A key part of this is a strategic review of the Worldwide Slot Guidelines, the industry’s guide for how to do this, which is being done in conjunction with Airports Council International and the Worldwide Airport Coordinators Group. Some 80 airlines are involved and IATA is keen for other cargo players to get involved. “We do encourage more cargo airline representatives to take part,” said Maughan.

Under review are four main areas – access, growth, correct monitoring of the slot use and whether the process is dynamic – to insure the process works for both passenger and cargo airlines, as well as for the airports. The review got going in June, with IATA and its partners hoping to have some hard evidence to allow the guidelines to be updated by the end of 2018.

“By mid-2019 we hope to have a lot of this wrapped up,” said Maughan.

By Michael Mackey

Correspondent | Geneva