A Loophole So Large, You Could Fly an Airbus Through It

Lots of leg room here. Due to use-it-or-lose-it rules for slots at Britain's Heathrow airport, it looks like the British airline bmi might fly empty "ghost-flights" rather than give up highly valuable Heathrow slots it owns.

Britain’s third-largest airline, bmi, will fly near-empty aircraft from this autumn to preserve multimillion-pound take-off and landing slots, The Times has learnt.

The rise in fuel prices and an expected slump in passenger numbers after the summer mean that many airlines will have to cancel flights, but bmi does not want to lose its coveted slots at Heathrow, which are valued at £770 million. ...

The decision by bmi to fly “ghost flights” - short-haul trips with only a handful of passengers - is one of a series of plans being drawn up by airlines. Senior industry figures admit that other carriers will cancel domestic flights at short notice and gave warning of chaos ahead for business travellers. Rather than withdrawing from uneconomic routes, the tactic of cancelling individual flights is another way of retaining landing slots. ...

Tim Bye, deputy chief executive of bmi, told The Times that his airline would prefer to cancel uneconomic flights, typically those in the middle of the day from London to the North of England and Scotland, but “we have to fly that service eight out of ten times”. Under “use-it-or-lose-it” rules that govern the allocation of the much-sought-after slots at Heathrow, airlines must use their scheduled slots 80 per cent of the time - or forfeit them. ...

Theresa Villiers, the Shadow Transport Secretary, said: “It is imperative that the system for running slots does nothing to push the airlines into flying empty planes. Besides damaging the environment, it makes absolutely no economic sense.”

Well, it probably does make economic sense for the airline, given that they are choosing to do it. Perhaps Heathrow's use-it-or-lose-it rules are more the problem. Rather than attack the airline, probably more constructive to review the rules. Or at least let them not fly and then just say they did...

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Tim Bye, deputy chief executive of bmi, told The Times that his airline would prefer to cancel uneconomic flights, typically those in the middle of the day from London to the North of England and Scotland, but “we have to fly that service eight out of ten times”. Under “use-it-or-lose-it” rules that govern the allocation of the much-sought-after slots at Heathrow, airlines must use their scheduled slots 80 per cent of the time - or forfeit them. ...

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