Amsterdam Schiphol Schiphol Airport's slot coordination committee has submitted a "local rule" proposal to the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management which, if approved, would make it easier for cargo airlines to secure slots at the Dutch gateway.
According to the Dutch shippers and logistics organization, Evofenedex, the proposal was submitted by both the airport’s operator, Schiphol Group, and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (KL, Amsterdam Schiphol), albeit separately. The plan, which has already been approved by a large majority of carriers in the slot coordination committee, would see cargo carriers gain priority in the allocation of unused slots.
“We are pleased that the airlines, through the coordination committee, have resolved this by themselves and that the majority of them are in favour of the local rule," Schiphol Group said in a statement. "Schiphol recognises the value of air cargo as part of its Mainport project, and therefore its value to the Dutch economy. It is Schiphol’s objective to aim for sustainable growth at the airport after 2020 and air freight is an important part of that."
The proposal was put forward in response to an ongoing debacle over slot allocations for cargo operators at the increasingly congested airport. Under global IATA rules, airlines which use their slots less than 80% of the times risk losing them. This threshold is more difficult to reach by cargo airlines, whose operations are less regular than those of their passenger counterparts.
Schiphol was forced to introduce a slot-reduction process with the onset of the winter 2017/18 season after it breached a legally prescribed quota of 500,000 aircraft movements per annum earlier this year.
The situation has recently forced some of the full-freighter carriers to relocate to other airports, mostly Liège and Brussels National. After Russian operator AirBridgeCargo has lost ten of its twenty-three weekly slots, Russia threatened to close its airspace to Dutch-registered aircraft and airlines in retaliation. The conflict was eventually resolved by a slot-sharing commercial agreement between the cargo operator and KLM.
According to the ch-aviation capacity module, AirBridge Cargo is the largest full-freighter operator at the airport, currently operating fourteen weekly departures while KLM operates forty-seven weekly departures with its mixed passenger-cargo B747-400(M)s. Other all-cargo airlines present at Amsterdam include Martinair (Netherlands) with fourteen weekly departures, China Cargo Airlines with twelve and Suparna Airlines with ten.
