From Wizz Air to Easyjet, why slots at Milan Linate are so coveted

The old Alitalia has always had control of the majority of slots at Linate, although over time flights have been reduced and not all slots are used regularly. Thus Ita, which inherited Alitalia's business, holds about 60% of the slots, the hourly slots at the city airport. The Lufthansa group together with its subsidiaries has about 6% of the slots. Therefore, the concentration between the two groups would result in 66% of the slots being held by one entity.

Too many, according to the European Antitrust Authority. This is why the EU Commission's Directorate General for Competition has demanded, as one of the conditions for approving the agreement, that there should be a 'renunciation' of a conspicuous share of the slots of the Ita-Lufthansa hub. The extent of the required cut has not been detailed, but this is the heaviest sacrifice imposed by Brussels.

Lufthansa as buyer, together with the Ministry of the Economy as seller, has put on the negotiating table a reduction of 11 slot pairs at Ita, entitling 11 landings and the same number of take-offs, i.e. 22 aircraft movements, corresponding to 11 daily frequencies from Milan airport. Is it a lot or is it little?

Based on the permitted aircraft movements at Linate, 22 aircraft movements per day are equivalent to 7.1% of the maximum permitted movements. Giving up these slots does not automatically mean reducing flights: because Ita has more slots than it actually uses. But if the slots that are released are to be used by other carriers, since the airport is saturated, current flights would have to be reduced to make room for new flights. The question will therefore have to be clarified by also seeing what slot times Ita and Lufthansa would give up.

What would happen to the slots that Ita would vacate? It is up to the body that coordinates slots, Assoclearance, to reallocate them to other companies that request them. International rules state that in a 'coordinated' airport, i.e. subject to traffic restrictions as Linate is, half of the freed slots must go to new entrant carriers (a rule created to favour competition) and half must go to those who have requested them, according to a waiting list.

A suitor for Ita's slots is the Hungarian low-cost Wizz Air. As is the British easyJet. Ryanair, on the other hand, has said it is not interested.

In recent days, Ita and Lufthansa have signed preliminary agreements with easyJet and the Spanish company Volotea to allow the two low-cost carriers to start short-haul connections between Milan Linate, Rome Fiumicino and central Europe in order to bring back competition on routes where the Italian-German marriage would give an overwhelming advantage to Ita-Lufthansa. This is another chapter in the demands made by the EU on Ita and Lufthansa. Which is intertwined with the question of slots at Linate. The matter is now on the table of the EU antitrust authority, which has the final say.