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Sydney’s new slot manager has claimed it can make the airport’s slot regime the most transparent in the world.
Airport Coordination Limited (ACL), which will take over slot management at Australia’s largest airport on 1 April, was awarded a three-year contract last month to replace outgoing manager Airport Coordination Australia (ACA).
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ACL manages slots at 75 airports worldwide, such as London Heathrow and Dubai, and is owned by a consortium, including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and easyJet. The company has now established a local arm, ACL Asia-Pacific (ACL APAC).
Speaking to Australian Aviation, ACL CEO Neil Garwood said the firm aims to manage slots “as effectively and efficiently as possible” for both new entrants and incumbent carriers.
“We believe we bring a model that improves quality, improves efficiency, and most importantly, I think, brings a new level of transparency,” he said.
“We will have a website locally that will on which we will publish all the slot information at the airport. So, for example, all the airline slot holdings, which airlines hold which slots, how much they are using those slots, what’s the rate of cancellations, for example.
“All that transparency helps to create a level of visibility that just hasn’t been there before, and it’s no overstatement to say that will place the Sydney slot regime in a position that’s more transparent, we believe, than any other airport across the world.”
Garwood also pushed back on the idea that the airport is full to bursting, saying it does have capacity that can be used.
“There are slots available. Some of those slots are in the peak. The domestic capacity numbers have not returned to the 2019 levels, and slot utilisation is not as high as we see in other airports. In the UK, some of the slot utilisation is 90 to 95 per cent – we don’t think it’s that level at Sydney,” he said.
“All those factors together tell us that there are opportunities to develop the capacity utilisation at Sydney, and we think those represent real opportunities for the airport and the airlines here to build and develop and grow in the future.
“What good slot management does is help to make the best use of that capacity. We don’t create new capacity; we don’t create demand, either. We certainly believe that there is capacity available at Sydney Airport which could be used by incumbent carriers or possibly for new entrants if they wanted to enter the market.”
Slot utilisation has been a hot-button issue at Sydney Airport for some time. Currently, an airline can keep a take-off slot indefinitely as long as it operates the slot at least 80 per cent of the time, a rule which the government last year indicated it would keep in a reform of Sydney’s slot system.
The slot rules are necessary because two aircraft cannot simultaneously take-off on the same runway, but have led to accusations that major carriers are effectively gaming the system to take advantage, though both Qantas and Virgin have vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
Garwood told Australian Aviation that ACL APAC would seek to improve slot utilisation at Sydney Airport in the name of improved performance.
“As we take on the operation from the first of April, that’s certainly something we would want to work collaboratively with the community in order to achieve because the higher the utilisation figures are, the more that frees up any other capacity to be available, and that’s ultimately what slot management is all about, getting best use of the capacity,” he said.
ACA, which lost the contract to ACL APAC last year, has board representation from Qantas, Virgin, the Regional Aviation Association of Australia, and Sydney Airport itself.
The company was last year criticised by former ACCC chair Rod Sims in the wake of Rex and Bonza’s collapses, with Sims accusing Qantas and Virgin of using it to box out competitors, a charge which it vehemently denied.
Speaking to Australian Aviation in December, its chief executive, Petra Popovac, said the government had made its decision based on poor information.
“Our company was formed specifically to allocate the slots at Sydney. I am incredibly disappointed that the government would choose a foreign company to allocate slots at our biggest airport in Australia,” Popovac said.
“We have been a victim of scapegoating on a number of issues and it’s a shame that the government listened to those incorrect narratives, and in my opinion, made the wrong decision for the stakeholders of the airport and the Australian public.
“The government has sent Australian jobs offshore, jobs that are highly technical and are currently performed by Australian experts in their field.”
