The future Austrian Airlines boss Anette Mann complained on the social media portal LinkedIn about the current slot regulation of the European Union. Under the guise of environmental protection, she criticized the fact that 18.000 avoidable flights have to be carried out in order to obtain take-off and landing rights. Wizz Air Chief Operations Officer Heiko Holm countered and wanted to know why Lufthansa does not simply give back slots that are not needed due to lack of demand.

“Why not return the slots and let others use them?” Asks the Wizz Air manager future CEO of Austrian Airlineswho currently works for the parent company Lufthansa. Mann replied, "When I look at your job title I think you know how the business works and that your suggestion is not a viable option".

Of course, Heiko Holm couldn't let that sit on him and accused Mann: “It is also not acceptable to prevent competition, to demand an extension of the exemption regulations for slots and to demand a bureaucratic approach from the EU. There are airlines that would like to use the slots for passenger traffic ”.

The future Austrian Airlines boss then had no answer to that. Instead, her colleague Jörg Bauer replied: "Nobody will stop you from using the slots that have already been returned in the first quarter of 2022 ... have fun!" Swiss Head of Flight Operations, Stefan Kenan Scheib, also gave his Lufthansa colleague support: “Absolutely correct to question this rule. In flight operations, we implement all possible savings potential that can be safely used by our Lufthansa Group pilots in order to reduce CO2 emissions. These efforts are right, useful and need to be facilitated by measures to make air traffic management more efficient, and even more so by rules that allow airlines to further reduce their emissions. Not the other way around."

Brussels demands majority use of take-off and landing rights

The background to this controversial discussion is that the European Union wants allocated take-off and landing rights to be used. Actually, 2021 percent of the slots should actually have been flown in the current winter timetable period 22/80, but Brussels decided immediately before the start that 64 percent was sufficient. That too is apparently still too much for the Lufthansa Group, because after promising booking numbers in October and parts of November 2021, demand has collapsed. Of course, the competitor Wizz Air is also affected by this, because it has suspended over 200 routes due to a lack of new bookings. Ryanair hit it with a bit of a time lag, but so did the company headed by Michael O'Leary stroked around a third of the offer that was originally planned in January 2022.

Lufthansa has been lobbying for a few days against the current slot regulation of the European Union and is demanding that it be lifted. In the previous winter period 2020/21, it did not matter how much or how little was flown, because the rules were suspended and the take-off and landing rights could not be lost. At the moment you have to use 64 percent. The Lufthansa Group is of the opinion that around 18.000 flights for which there is no demand according to its own account must be carried out.

Low costers have also suspended numerous routes

Wizz Air and Ryanair in particular have spoken out against the suspension of the slot rules from the first day of the corona pandemic. Sometimes louder, sometimes quieter, however, the two low-cost airlines claim that “expensive airlines” should be protected. There is a demand for reassignment to airlines, which then actually use these highly sought-after take-off and landing rights. Of course, you mean yourself. Of course, slot owners like the Lufthansa Group see the situation completely differently.

The discussion quoted at the beginning between Lufthansa manager Annette Mann, who will soon be at the helm of Austrian Airlines, and Wizz Air COO Heiko Holm, is a little amusing, as Wizz Air is well known has temporarily suspended an enormous number of routes and at larger airports there is a risk of losing take-off and landing rights. Of course, this does not affect routes between smaller airports, the existence of which is occasionally only found on the Wizz Air or Ryanair websites. Small airports, also disparagingly called “Landratspisten” or “Provincial Airports”, are usually not slot-regulated due to a lack of traffic.