EU industry agreement on conditions and best practices related to an alleviation of the use-it-or-lose-it rule for W20 in the EU

Tuesday 1 September 2020

A use-it-or-lose-it rule dispensation for W20 is presently being considered by the European Commission.

The European Commission has requested the Industry to agree on fair and adequate conditions attached to a possible extension of the current alleviation of the  use-it-or-lose-it rule to W20 in order to balance the needs of all stakeholders and to ensure timely return of slots that are not planned for use.

EUACA, the association representing European Airport Coordinators and Schedules Facilitators is happy to have reached an agreement with the associations representing the European and International air carriers, namely A4E, IATA, AIRE, and ACI-Europe, the association representing the European airports, on the attached conditions that meet the European Commission request and that should be applied to an extension of the use-it-or-lose it alleviation to W20.

While the EU decision-making process  is still underway, and bearing in mind that the Historic Baseline Date (HBD) for W20 will be the reference date for all slot series  potentially falling under the W20 waiver, EUACA strongly urges all air carriers operating on airports where the EU Slot Regulation 95/93 applies, to voluntarily abide by the attached Industry best practices as agreed by their representative organisations and to include the agreed conditions in their slot management strategy for W20.