As the aviation industry enters the Winter season, it’s a good moment to look at what is happening to airline slot holdings in the UK.
ACL allocated slots for this Winter in early June. At the initial slot allocation date, there was a positive growth picture for Winter 2019. Across the 18 UK airports coordinated or facilitated by ACL, movements were up on last year by over 13,000, or over 1.5%. Seats were up by almost 4m, over 2.6%.
However, things changed significantly by the Historic Baseline Date (HBD) – the date when the coordinator sets the baseline for an airline’s slots for the coming season. Airlines return slots ahead of this deadline, so the schedule on this date is close to what they expect to operate.
Winter 2019 movements dropped from initial allocation by over 60,000 by the HBD, significantly more than the 46,000 decrease a year before for Winter 2018 (7.2% and 5.6% reductions respectively). Future capacity – measured in seats – also fell faster, down by 10.4m for Winter 2019 compared to 8m for Winter 2018. This means that Winter 2019 movements, which were 13,000 higher than Winter 2018 at SAL, are almost 2,000 lower than we saw at this point last year for Winter 2018. The number of seats in the market is still expected to be up on last year, as airlines continue to upgauge their aircraft, but at a much lower growth rate than for Winter 2018.
While numbers of movements for Winter 2019 are essentially flat, the diversity of operations at UK airports continues to increase. The number of distinct operators serving UK airports rose once again. In Winter 2019 this number increased by ten, from 169 to 179 in Winter 2019. The number of countries served remained nearly constant, with an increase of one this year to 112, while for Winter 2019 the number of distinct destinations served increased by ten to 476.
Capacity is increasingly tight at some UK airports, which may be contributing to the essentially flat outlook for slots this winter. It’s also worth noting that the slots held at 31 August included those of Thomas Cook Airlines, which is no longer operating, so capacity is likely to fall anyway. Even without this, the lower numbers of slots and slowdown in seats growth suggests there is a more cautious mood in aviation in the UK this winter.
