Slots are not automatic for a certain time of day/week they are issued by the central flow management unit in Brussels every day and are designed to keep the numbers of aircraft flying through any particular sector of airspace to a manageable level. Whilst they benefit the area controllers more they have more of an impact on airfield ops due to the flight having to take-off within a specified time period (-5 mins to +10 mins) of the slot time. If the aircraft misses its slot time then a new slot has to be issued which is when delays start occuring.
ok. i guess what i'm really trying to determine is the sequence of communication between all systems.
do say Ryanair's ops team file a plan for a flight that would normally be scheduled and the CFMU issue a slot based on this request?
and if this slot is missed, will a new strip with updated dep time automatically come out of the atc system to the controllers for the conerned flight?
thanks a lot chilli and 1985
