Dubai Southern Runway Closure

Guidance to Carriers for Summer 2019 (S19) Coordination Process

Further to the announcement that Southern runway will close to allow rehabilitation work to be completed, the following paper will provide some further guidance for the Coordination process.

Schedule Historic List Message (SHL)

ACL will base the SHL for S19 on the S18 baseline held on 16 February 2018. Any slots allocated after this date will not be entitled to historic status during the closure period. ACL will send a SHL to all carriers holding slots on or before the 23 April 2018. Slots that have been selected for cancellation will be annotated as a U line with a reason code CLO.

Should an operator subsequently fail to operate sufficient services during the remainder of the S18 season to achieve 80% utilisation as per the DXB Local Rule on Historic Determination or misuse slots, the airline will be informed of the failure to retain historic slots and the slots will be removed and returned to the pool for reallocation.

Carriers that wish to cancel more that indicated on the SHL during the closure period may do so and benefit from force majeure alleviation at Dubai Airport so that these slots can be returned to the pool to mitigate the impact on other airlines.

Coordination Committee

The Winter 2018 (W18) Coordination Committee will be held in Dubai on 11 April 2018 and will include a briefing on the need for the S19 runway closure and the process for managing the capacity reduction. Please contact ACL should you require additional information.

Submissions

The Submission deadline for S19 is 17 May 2018 (as per the W18 deadline)

• To claim confirmed Historic slots unchanged please submit using F action code
• To request a Historic Retime please submit using C/R or C/L
• To request a change of day for a confirmed historic slot please submit using C/R or C/L
• Please do not submit new requests for S19 at this stage of the process. New slots can be requested at the standard IATA S19 Submission deadline of 04 October 2018

Carriers should also identify flexibility (using IATA flexibility indicators) for accepting a retime rather than cancellation.

ACL is committed to maximising the available capacity at Dubai International during the closure period. Carriers wishing to reinstate flights that were identified for cancellation in the SHL should include a SI advising the priority of individual flights for reinstatement should additional capacity become available during the coordination process.

ACL will take into account the information supplied by carriers during Initial Coordination to ensure maximum utilisation of the available capacity and minimise cancellations wherever possible.

Summer 2020 (S20) Historics

Cancellation of flights during the Runway Closure will be considered as force majeure at Dubai International Airport.

ACL will communicate with Coordinators across the world detailing the impact of the runway closure and requesting flexibility when determining historic status for S20 for this flights affected by the reduced capacity.

Historic slots for S20 will be based on slots held for the period between 31 May 2019 and 26 October 2019. Slots held and operated for 80% of the period will gain historics at these times for the entire S20 season.

Part season operations that fall outside of this period that held a historic before the introduction of the Local Rule on Historic Eligibility and were marked for cancellation in the S19 SHL will also be allocated historic slots for the subsequent season for the equivalent period held in S18.

ACL recognises that carriers may relocate services for the entire season or for alternative periods as a result of the runway closure. Such carriers are requested to discuss their cancellations with ACL so that appropriate action can be taken to ensure they are not disadvantaged by the closure in the subsequent season.

Key Dates

11 April 2018                       W18 Coordination Committee including S19 Runway Closure Briefing

23 April 2018                       ACL will send operators a SHL detailing the flights held and indicating the required cancellations during the period of the closure.

10 May 2018                        Deadline for agreeing historic flights detailed in SHL. After this date ACL will not enter discussion on the flights required to be cancelled.

17 May 2018                         Submission Deadline for claiming Historics and requesting Retimes for the entire S19 season. Historic precedence is subject to meeting the 80/20 rule across the S18 season and slots failing will be removed and returned to the slot pool. No new slots requests will be accepted at this stage.

07 June 2018                        Initial Slot Allocation (SAL) distributed to operators

19-21 June 2018                  IATA Slot Conference 142, Vancouver, Canada (ACL will be available to discuss both W18 and S19 seasons)

From 22 June 2018             Operators can request changes or delete flights by sending a standard SCR through to the date of operation. Carriers should be aware that new requests will not be permitted until the IATA Submission Deadline (04 October 2018)

04 October 2018                 Submission Deadline for New Slot requests for periods outside the closure period.

01 November 2018             Initial Slot Allocation of new requests (SAL) distributed to operators

13-16 November 2018       IATA Slot Conference 143, Madrid, Spain

Updates/Transparency

ACL has a dedicated page on its website relating to the SRR and will publish all relevant documents and updates at various stages on the capacity reduction process to ensure that transparency is maintained. The page can be found at https://www.acl-uk.org/dubai-southern-runway-rehabilitation/