Right of Access to the Airport: The Rules of Airport Slot Allocation

The growth of airlines and competition, has raised new challenges for the exploitation of airport land infrastructure, out of which, the slot allocation in hub or dense airports is the most important one. The history of airports in the world has seen many rules in this regard, so that while in the beginning, “first-come, first-serve rule” used to be applied in many airports, the growth in demands made the regulators to devise new rules for slot allocation. Sometimes, committees comprised of the airlines were in charge of such delicate issue, but the rising anti-competitive practices and deadlock in agreements led the governments to step in and regulate the slot allocation based on various rules including “grandfather right rule”, “use it or lose it rule”, “buy-sell rule”, “lottery”, etc. Such rules which are followed by slot mobility and the possibility of taking it as collateral are dealt with in this article with emphasis on the economic and legal points of view and with a comparative study of EU, USA and Iranian law.