Slot Coordination Fee
With the approval of the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK),
SCA is authorized to charge a "Slot Coordination Fee" (SCF), which is collected by the airport operators on behalf of SCA
from the aircraft operators.
The SCF as of January 1st, 2025 is
2,60 € per movement
Introduction
The EU Regulation 95/93 as amended and national legislation form the legal basis of the slot allocation process in place.
The coordination process has to be done in a neutral, transparent and non-discriminatory way.
IATA SSIM Manual (Standard Schedules Information Manual) / Chapter 6 describes each technical detail of schedule coordination.
IATA WASG (Worldwide Airport Slot Guidelines) provides governments, airport operators, coordinators, facilitators and airlines
with details about the process of schedule coordination.
EUACA (European Airport Coordinators Association) and WWACG (World Wide Airport Coordinators Group) have worked out Guidelines
and Recommended Practices on some specific issues.
Many Coordinators use specific software (SCA is using SCORE application software, together with OCS) for the allocation process.
This section of our website shall give you an overview, what slot coordination and schedule facilitation is about.
Process of Coordination
The calendar year is divided into two scheduling seasons
Summer Season
- from the last Sunday in March to the last Saturday in October (where the following Sunday is still in October)
- 30-31 weeks
Post SAL activities will be accepted until the last Friday before the start of the IATA SC, 12:00 hours local time Vienna.
Winter Season
- from the last Sunday in October to the last Saturday in March (where the following Sunday is still in March)
- 21-22 weeks
SHL Deadline
The coordinator provides each airline with the details of their historic slots on Level 3 airports by this date.
Agreed Historics Deadline
Airlines can raise any disagreements with the coordinator’s determination of historics by this date. Airports must declare their capacity.
Initial Submission Deadline
Airlines must submit their planned operations to coordinators and facilitators by this date.
SAL Deadline
Coordinators and facilitators must distribute the result of the initial coordination to all airlines by this date.
IATA Slot Conference
A forum organized by IATA for the coordination of planned operations at Level 2 and Level 3 airports, held twice each year for summer and winter season respectively.
Series Return Deadline
The date at which airlines must return series of slots they do not intend to operate.
Historics Baseline Date
The reference date used for the use-it-or-lose-it calculation to determine historic precedence.
Coordination Parameters
Every airport declares its own parameters to manage their specific infrastructural bottlenecks.
Parameters might restrict the following:
- Operating hours of the airport (i.e. night curfew)
- Runway capacity
- Apron capacity (i.e. number of parking stands on the apron parking allocation)
- Terminal capacity
- passenger flow parameter and gate allocation
- check in (i.e. number of check in counters)
- security control
- immigration and customs (i.e. Schengen / non-Schengen)
- number of gates
- Noise restrictions
- Time interval of parameters
General principles
The term "airport slot" refers to the scheduled time of arrival or departure available or allocated to an aircraft on a specific date at a coordinated airport (EU Regulation 95/93, art. 2).
Airport Slot Coordination deals only with the allocation of airport slots (no ATC slots) and is not related to traffic rights.
In order to operate into and out of a coordinated airport, airlines and General and Business Aviation must have an airport slot allocated.
The coordinator / facilitator has to be independent of any single stakeholder in the aviation industry and shall act according to EU regulation 95/93 in a neutral, non-discriminatory and transparent way.
Airport slots are allocated on the basis of defined capacity parameters, established by airport operators after consultation of the airport users and the coordinators.
One of the basic principles of the airport slot allocation process is historical precedence, which allows airlines to retain the airport slots allocated to them in the next equivalent scheduling season provided they have been utilized at least 80%.
Priority rules like "new entrant status", “effective period of operation”, “frequency of operation” etc. do exist.
At level 2 airports the function of the coordinator is more that of a schedule facilitator, who is gathering the data of all planned operations and in case of congestion exceeding the capacity limits proposing voluntary schedule adjustments. In Austria, all airports are handled strictly according to the coordination rules.
Response to airport slot requests will be given within a period of 3 business days. Unless stated otherwise, clearance offers from coordinators to the airlines are valid for 3 business days only. If an airline has not accepted the offer within the 3-day time limit, the coordinator is entitled to cancel the offer.
All coordination activities are handled in UTC.