ICAO Member States agreed at the last Assembly to engage in global air transport liberalization.

This will have an important impact in the international air transport industry and on the airports around the world since the demand of traffic will further increase.

ICAO already identified the importance of establishing a level playing field in order to enable such global liberalization. The Air Transport Regulation Panel of ICAO is working on elaborating draft regulation and best practices to ensure that air carriers will compete fairly on this upcoming more open market.

This liberalization of the so-called traffic rights for air services will inevitably generate an increase of demand on airports across the world. Unfortunately the available airport capacity might not be sufficient to accommodate this growing demand. Even though the increase of airport capacity would be the best solution, additional airport capacity is not necessarily possible everywhere and in any case shall require some time to implement. Fair access to a limited airport capacity will then become increasingly important to guarantee that regulated access to air services is not replaced by regulated access to airports.

Adopting international rules or best practices to ensure fair access to airports is pivotal to guarantee that the global air transport liberalization is a real success.

How to ensure fair access to airports?

 The liberalization of air services should give the possibility to air carrier of two contracting States to freely and fairly open new services between these States. It would not make sense to then substitute the restricted access to air services with unfair limitation to the access to airports in these contracting States. So a minimum set of rules should be adopted to avoid that access to airports becomes a new way to “regulate” the market.

Airport access control for air carriers is being used in an ever-increasing number of airports across the world. The conditions and ways in which this process is being implemented vary from country to country. Very often this control is being called airport coordination or airport slot allocation but this terminology is reflecting a broad set of practices. In all cases though, an air carrier cannot operate on a specific airport if it does not get the authorization of an “authority” most of the time named ”airport coordinator”. Nevertheless in several countries this “authority” is either the national based carrier or the airport managing body, or the only ground-handling agent (that can be either directly or indirectly linked to the previous two types), or a department of the Civil Aviation. Often, the criteria used by these authorities in order to grant or deny the airport access are neither clear nor transparent. Is it based on airport infrastructure shortage, on a lack of human resources of the ground-handling agent or of the Air Navigation Service Provider at the airport, or on whether the home carrier has managed to secure the appropriate authorisation at the other end of the route?

Fair access to airports would be better guaranteed if a minimum set of rules is agreed between the contracting States or are included in the ICAO rules or best practices. Such rules have already been largely elaborated by the International Air Transport Industry and are rather consensual among the air transport community. For many years international air carriers have been developing a set of rules on their own and ever since independent airport coordinators were established they largely contributed to that work. What is now called the World Wide Slot Guidelines (WSG) published by IATA broadly includes all the necessary set of rules that would better guarantee the fair access to airports. But these are guidelines, which are only binding those who accept to follow them on a voluntary basis. They also cover many other issues that simply the fair access to airports and this might be one of the reasons why States have not yet included them in their set of regulations as they are, since they felt necessary to adjust them to their specific local situation or to what they believe is a specific local situation. Nevertheless it is possible to extract from them some basic rules that could be more powerful under an ICAO guidance umbrella and considered as part of the requirement to ensure a fair access to the market in the context of the global air transport liberalization.

What are the key principles?

Transparency

• In a liberalized air transport world, access to an airport should only be denied to an approved air carrier (in terms of airworthiness, security, economic reliability and environmental performance) for a reason linked to the unavailability of the necessary airport resources at the time the air carrier is planning to operate.

This implies 3 pre-requisites:

- Airport capacity available for allocation is determined according to well established and internationally recognised airport capacity analysis methodologies;

- All parties interested in the airport capacity distribution are consulted before setting up the capacity parameters to be used for the allocation of the scarce resources;

- Information on airport capacity, which is available for allocation, is being communicated to the airport capacity users in advance and ideally made available on the Internet.

• Available airport capacity should be allocated to requesting carriers according to transparent rules and regulations. It is necessary in order to ensure fair access to airports that air carriers know in advance of their schedule submission to the competent authority which rules and regulation will be applied so that they are confident that new rules will not be set just to deny them the access to the airport at a commercially interesting timing. Contracting States should make it clear to the air transport industry what airport capacity allocation rules are being used for the access to the airports under their responsibility. If they do not have specific regulation they should also clearly stipulate that the Worldwide Slot Guidelines are applied. Without such transparent information on applicable airport capacity allocation rules, no access restriction based on lack of airport capacity should be possible.
• Airport capacity allocation rules should primarily aim at making the best possible use of the scarce available capacity. Each stakeholder and probably each contracting State have their own clear idea of what the best possible use of available scarce capacity is. Nevertheless the final rules should be established in each country by the competent authority after a consultation of the key stakeholders namely the airport capacity providers (including Air Navigation Service Providers), the airport capacity users (air carriers and other aircraft operators) and the officially appointed authority responsible for the allocation of the airport capacity. Aviation is an international industry therefore the expert representatives of all stakeholders at international and regional level should be consulted and not only those from the individual contracting state concerned.

Non-discrimination

• The same airport capacity allocation rules should be applicable to all carriers operating at a specific airport and should not depend on the nationality of the carrier as long as its operation is compatible with the bilateral or multilateral agreement in force.
• Bilateral or multilateral agreements should not be used to set, regulate or derogate from the published airport capacity allocation rules applicable at an airport.
• Dissuasive non-discriminatory enforcement measures of the slot allocation rules should be put in place in order to ensure that those working by the rules are not suffering from the misbehavior of the others. This requires as a prerequisite the implementation of a robust monitoring process (comparison between what was authorized and what was actually operated) in order to swiftly detect all types of misuses such as operating without an authorization (a slot), intentionally operating at a time or in a manner different from what was authorized, not using the valuable capacity…).
• Allocate the airport capacity at each airport according to a coordinated international calendar, so that aircraft operators are informed of potential problems related to their schedules all at the same time and not when the national carrier got its own schedule confirmation at its competitor’s home base. Additionally the earlier a carrier is aware of airport capacity issues the easier it is to find a solution to it in its overall aircraft rotation planning.
• Possible traffic distribution rules among several airports serving the same city should not be linked to the nationality of the air carriers.

Independence

• In order to allocate the scarce airport capacity it is pivotal that an independent entity be appointed. Such an entity is usually named the airport coordinator. Independency is a very relative issue and the most important thing is that those directly impacted by the coordinator’s decision really consider it as being independent. Airlines and airport managing bodies are highly impacted by the coordinator’s decision. Both IATA and ACI have endorsed some principles to assess the coordinator’s independency, which are attached to this paper. Such principles have also been elaborated with the WWACG, which represents the existing international airport coordinators community. Supported by the entire Industry these principles could be a good reference for ICAO’s consideration of what is an independent coordinator.
• As highlighted in the above-mentioned principles, both the functional AND the financial independence of a coordinator should be guaranteed.
• Costs of airport coordination should be fairly shared among the different shareholders.
• Contracting states should ensure that their appointed coordinator has adequate financial resources to provide the coordination services: (sufficient trained staff, adequate software, website to be transparent, possibility to attend the international slot conferences…).

Conclusion:

Global Air Transport liberalization is underway, but its main objectives might not be fully reached unless a fair access to airports is ensured with the implementation of basic principles that should be agreed by all contracting states. The principles of transparency, non-discrimination and independence, while imposing airport access restriction and while allocating the scarce airport resources are to be adopted as one of the pillar for a successful Air Transport liberalization.