The use it part is also interpretated differently. Some airports are much more flexible (arrive on a day, and you've used it) while some require you to arrive within 15 minutes. Especially for a (home) carrier with a lot of slots, matching the latter case is much easier.

A further example is gaming the Heathrow night slots. These are measured by a number per season, which works out to about 14 a day. They have tended to become used now principally for the pre-0600 early arrivals, although Heathrow is an H24 airport. BA have about half of them, so 7 a night.

However, one of these night slots is also needed for a post-2300 departure, so if there is a departure technical delay beyond then you need such a slot, an extra one of which is hard to come by so you can be stuck for an overnight delay. BA, however, can do an 0100 departure for a substantially delayed flight, and maybe a week later just tip an 0530 arrival back to 0605 by delaying one overseas departure for half an hour, or doing a few more laps of Lambourne.

Just remind what the Russians did to LH a couple years back when LH announced to move the Cargo OPS from Almaty to Astana. The Russians where freezing up Lufthansa’s accounts and threaded them with tax fraud and forced them to move the Cargo OPS to Novosibirsk instead even there was only a CAT I approach available. Sure they upgraded the airport to CAT III but that’s exactly the same.

That sounds like a win-win for the punter. Why would you force airlines to pull a long delay? That could cost them, and ultimately you, €600 per passenger plus missed connections, wasted trips, etc.

Indeed. But the non-BA carriers who cannot get one of the rare extra night slots are forced to do exactly this.

well summed up WHBM.

It was interesting how the VNV (Dutch Balpa) was doing their best to use this to keep foreign competition out... If they had been a real Dutch union instead of a KLM clone they would have helped keeping Martinair alive to fly those routes....

I think the Russians did the right thing!

so you would penalise BA and their customers just out of principle.

@ GlobalGlobal: Godwin! You lose. :mad:

What a load of crap. This is the second time in less than a week, that the VNV/Martinair discussion is brought up out of nowhere, in a thread that has nothing to do with it.
The other thread being the one on “KLM looking for pilots” in the terms and endearment section.
What is this? And why now? The MP/vnv implosion took place in 2013. Whatever happened then can hardly be used as an argument for current affairs. It is the same as “blaming the Germans” for anything you come across. I call this a new kind of Godwin.

Is this the new reality on any aviation news item that comes out of NL?
“Dutch aviation news! Great! Let’s blame the VNV again on Martinair!” :mad:

For the record: Martinair was primarily decimated because of greedy opportunism by certain Martinair individuals. These few guys have imploded MP from within. They had grossly over-estimated their legal position and are to blame for that mess.
Secondarily because of the reaction that vnv was forced to apply because of that stupidity.

I suggest someone re-starts that discussion by means of a new thread somewhere in the T&E section. Apparently not all is said and done.