Twistedfirefighter
It is a strange system at Brussels sometimes. You can have a big delay that suddenly becomes minimal. I don't know what the reason for the French restrictions last night. However, from previous experience, at night the Bordeaux restrictions are quite often caused by sectors being collapsed usually due to staffing problems. What this does is double the work of a controller as he/she has twice as much of an area to look after. This subsequently reduces capacity and gives you your large slot delay. If they manage to get extra staff to come in then they can revert to normal and this would explain why a big delay becomes slot cancelled. A ready message does a similar thing as this looks for missed slots and "gaps" in capacity that you could take, giving you an earlier slot time.
Hope this explains things a little.
ES
