“Air travel connects people all over the world and creates welfare and jobs worldwide, but it also has an impact on the environment. That is why we are actively working towards reducing CO₂ emissions, and taking a leading role in creating a more sustainable future for aviation” (from “Fly Responsibly”, KLM’s international environmental awareness campaign).
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, the flagship carrier of the Netherlands and part of the SkyTeam alliance, has launched an awareness campaign branded as “Fly Responsibly”, encouraging potential passengers to consider the environmental impact of flying, before buying an air ticket.
The campaign revolves around three questions: “What we do”, “What the industry can do” and “What you can do”, each of which evidently conveys a different message. For example, in directly addressing potential customers (“What you can do”), KLM suggests them to explore, with respect to a selected itinerary, other more environmentally-sustainable travel options like taking the train.
By this initiative, KLM is apparently pursuing the aim of capturing (and converting) the negative perception about airlines of an increasingly environmentally-aware public. The impact of air flights in terms of pollution is in fact becoming an undeniable image problem at global level: more and more companies might therefore rethink their business models to make their aircraft more efficient, manage their routes more rationally and pollute less with their ground and air activities.
That being said, it should be noted that KLM has so far mostly involved analysts and marketing experts but not yet attracted the attention of lawyers and economists since, moreover, it has not explicitly announced its intention to introduce drastic measures to curb consumption in the short term, such as, above all, a reduction in its short-haul routes.
Should this actually happen, what could be the consequences of re-routing due to ceasing the operation of short-haul flights?
In this regard, it should be preliminarily noted that KLM’s only hub is the Amsterdam-Schiphol airport, which is facing an unprecedented crisis due to a shortage of available slots. As explained in a note in Schiphol’s official website, significantly entitled “Slot scarcity at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol explained”, the maximum annual Air Traffic Movement (ATM) capacity is currently set on 500,000 movements due to local environmental quality and noise reduction requirements. Such limit has, however, already been reached.
As is known, take-off and landing slots – calculated on the basis of airport traffic capacity – are allocated by bodies/supervisory entities named “airport coordinators” (in Italy, Assoclearance), who allocate slots based on carriers’ applications. An airline is entitled to retain the right to manage slots only if it has operated at least 80% of the slots applied for (during the relevant scheduling period), with a 20% margin of flexibility. It should indeed be noted that, due to their highly public nature, slots should be made available and distributed according to pre-established rules, centred on transparency and non-discrimination (based on a “use it or lose it” principle). Therefore, in the case at hand, should an EU airline decide to stop operating any of its short-haul routes, the margin of flexibility of the corresponding slots would be at risk of being missed, with the consequence that it could see its slot allocation reconsidered.
Indeed, pursuant to Article 10 of Council Regulation (EEC) No 95/1993, “Any slot not utilised shall be withdrawn and placed in the appropriate slot pool unless the non-utilization can be justified by reason of the grounds of the grounding of an aircraft type, or the closure of an airport or airspace or other similarly exceptional case”. “Slots placed in the pools shall be distributed among applicant carriers”.
It follows, therefore, that even the hypothetical - and to date never explicitly proposed - reduction in the operation of the routes operated by an airline due to any environmental protection purpose, if adopted autonomously and not in coordination with other operators and supervisory authorities, would lead to the automatic reallocation of slots to other companies, which would consequently operate such routes in substitution of the former ones, thus nipping in the bud the attainment of the purpose of the initiative.
In conclusion, as things stand at present, apart from albeit-valid ethical reasons, any renunciation of short-haul flights, although deemed a truly useful measure for the eco-sustainability of the system, should first undergo a cost-benefit analysis by various airlines and, inevitably, would be subject to the unknowns of slot allocation, in respect of which the only way forward (which is still a long way off at the moment) appears to be a general drastic reduction in the capacity of individual EU airports and the consequent revision of slot allocation and management criteria.
This article is for information purposes only and is not intended as a professional opinion.
For further information, please contact Filippo Di Peio.
