The Belgian government is therefore asking the European Commission to rethink the rules on these slots, Mediahuis headlines reported on Wednesday.
The Lufthansa Groep group, of which Brussels Airlines is a part, will cancel 33,000 scheduled flights by the end of March, due to a drop in bookings caused by the Omicron variant of the Covid-19. These cancellations might have been even more substantial, but to retain take-off and landing rights, no less than 18,000 unnecessary flights will have to be provided this winter, including 3,000 by Brussels Airlines.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, the rule was that airlines insure at least 80% of their slots, otherwise they risked losing these “slots”. Now the proportion has already been revised downwards, to 50%, but this remains too high compared to the volume of reservations.
The Federal Minister of Mobility, Georges Gilkinet (Ecolo), therefore sent a letter to the European Commissioner for Transport, Adina V¿lean, to raise the issue. He considers that these rules are incomprehensible from an economic and ecological point of view. It therefore calls for further lowering the threshold for the use of slots and offering more flexibility to airlines to organize their flights.
