A couple of weeks ago at Palma (yes, there again) we called for start-up at CTOT -8 mins. We were on a remote stand with no pushback necessary. We of course received the predictable "you have missed your slot, you have to call operations for a new one". As usual, not a single aircraft at the hold point - we would have easily been airborne within the slot time.
So I call the Palma Operations frequency to see what's going on while the captain is on the phone to the company (and can't get through.) After being told to standby for a few minutes, they come back with a new slot in 2hrs 20 mins time. I enquire as to the reason for the delay, and the response comes back "we don't know, it has been given from flow management in Brussels." Muchas gracias for your help, mate.
A few minutes later the captain gets through to our ops on the phone and lets them know about the new slot. They can see it but tell us they can't do anything with it, nor even file a new flight plan, because it is something called a "tech slot". Neither the captain or I had ever heard of one of these before, but apparently it is a delay applied to your flight plan by the local air traffic control if you have a technical problem and won't be going for a while. From what our ops controller said, the upshot was that we had 'missed' our original slot (by being ready only 8 minutes before it instead of 15) and Palma had then, for reasons only known to themselves, whacked on a "tech" slot which couldn't be changed, and the flight plan couldn't be re-filed.
I asked the captain to point out to our ops guy that Palma Operations had said the slot had come from CFMU, to which ops replied that was nonsense and it had been assigned by Palma, as only they could apply that type of restriction, and there was nothing further he could do.
About two days later, the exact same thing happened again to another of our aircraft operated by a friend of mine. Almost a carbon copy.
Could someone with a better working knowledge of the slot system and Spanish ATC please clear up the following for me:
- What exactly is the definition of a 'tech slot'?
- Is it true that only the local ATC can apply it?
- If so, why did they lie to us and tell us explicitly that it came from CFMU?
- Is it correct, therefore, to assume that Palma did it just to annoy us as much as possible?
It's worth pointing out that it did improve by over an hour after sending a ready message, but I am interested in the principles behind it. I fail to see how it can be up to an ATC unit to decide whether or not an aircraft has a technical problem and how long that technical problem might take to fix, but I've never heard of this before and I'm only going on the limited 2nd hand information from our ops department. Given the poor service provided in Spain this summer, and the particularly appalling 'service' being provided by Palma, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that my assumption is correct.