MONITORING

Principles

EC Regulation 95/93, as amended, stipulates that the coordinator shall monitor the conformity of air carriers' operations with the slots allocated to them.

Slot monitoring at coordinated airports is a continuous process designed to ensure that most effective use is made of scarce capacity, an adequate level of service quality is maintained and intentional schedule abuse is separated from the normal variations in operational performance.

The main objective of slot monitoring should be to identify possible problems regarding the use of slots and seek solutions before they occur whenever possible, or as soon as possible after the date of operation.

Slot monitoring should be done in a timely manner in order to give airlines the opportunity to correct behaviour during the current season by establishing a dialogue with affected air carriers as soon as possible when potential issues are identified.

All procedures related to slot monitoring must be based on the principles of neutrality, transparency and non-discrimination.

Guidance night rules

Since 2009, the number of airport slots to operate flights in the night period is limited to 16.000 slots per year, wherefore maximum 5.000 slots for departures in the night period. BSC is monitoring the usage of slots and reporting to the Belgian Civil Aviation Authority (BCAA), all flights operated in the night period without holding a valid airport slot for a departure or an arrival in the night. Besides the sanctions that the BCAA may decide to apply to these cases, night infringements do also have consequences for the determination of historic rights in the next equivalent IATA season. (document "guidance to airlines")

Procedures

Every month we report to the Belgian Civil Aviation Authority (BCAA) on irregularities in the usage of airport slots at Brussels Airport.

Irregularity categories are:

“Not Coordinated” flights = flights operated without holding a valid airport slot
“Misuses” = flights published (STD/STA) in the central database of the airport at a time that is different from the airport slot allocated
“Night Abuses” = flights operated in the night period (23h00-05h59 local runway times) while holding a slot for a daytime operation.

We send this report to airlines in order to obtain justifications about the discrepancies reported in our files. These justifications are then discussed with the BCAA. It is then to the BCAA to decide if they go further with investigations and eventually the operator receives a fine.

How should you manage your airport slots at Brussels Airport ?

Each flight must obtain an airport slot before filing your flight plan.
The time (Schedule time of departure or arrival STD/STA) given to your handler must be the same like the airport slot obtained
In case of delay within the same UTC day of operation, you should:
- Not request a new slot in case of delayed flight within the same day, even if the flight is now operating in the night period (This is the rule of IATA Worldwide Scheduling Guideline that we strictly apply).
- Not change the schedule published to your handling agent. Please note that it is your handling agent who is transmitting the standard published schedules of the flight (STA/STD) to the central database of the airport.

At the end of a period (4 to 5 weeks, depending of the month), BSC will send you a report. We expect from your company to give us an explanation for each line of the report. We don’t need pages of explanations but only enough information to understand and justify the case.
Just to make it very clear, we do not judge on your punctuality, it is not the purpose of airport slot monitoring in general.