Reforming Sydney Airport slots to boost efficiency, competition and consumers outcomes
The Normalisation of Deviation or in other words, tell a lie long and often enough and it becomes the truth!
In 1988 I attended along with my opposite numbers in the airline industry at the time, a meeting in Sydney that basically set up the slot time system (Controlled Departure Time Program). Here we had a 3rd party supposedly telling us how the commercially run our airlines.
The next weekend my opposite number from the other airline and I were enjoying some aero's and a few circuits in his Tiger Moth at our local airfield. Somewhere about mid downwind for 18 we arrived at a decision on how to address this CDTP thing.
We basically phoned each other in the early AM and swapped the slot times we couldn't use with each other (Hazo's and East-West were involved as well) the upshot of this was we were able to run our airlines with minimal or no disruption from the CDTP system.
The implementation of Slot times appeared to be an industrial ploy from the talking traffic lights and had we meekly followed the program without any pushback there was potential for disruption to our schedules.
So now 36 years later the lie continues but now it is exacerbated by the decrepit infrastructure that has not kept pace with use or technology.
CC