The Legal Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic in the Use of Airport Slots João Almeida Vidal1 Abstract; 1. Context; 2. The 80/20 Rule; 3. Possible Reactions to Protect Airline Companies; 3.1. The legislative approach; 3.2. The contractual approach; 4. Conclusions; References. ABSTRACT This paper aims to analyse the problems arising from COVID-19 pandemic in the use of airport slots. Due to the fact that COVID-19 pandemic grounded almost the entire fleets of all aircraft carriers, it is important to address the consequences of maintaining the rules on slots in force during the pandemic and if there something that should be made to mitigate these effects. Keywords: slot; airport, COVID-19. 1. CONTEXT An airport slot is the scheduled time of arrival or departure available or allocated to an aircraft movement on a specific date and has to be paid by airline carriers on a contractual basis2. The COVID-19 pandemic grounded almost the entire fleets of all aircraft carriers but, if nothing is made, they must carry on paying for their slots or they take the risk to lose them. In fact, companies will have to pay to maintain their slots in various airports despite the fact they are not using them and if the 80/20 rule continuous in force, airline carriers might lose their slots, even if they carry on paying them. 1 Invited Professor at Faculty of Economics, University of Algarve, Portugal; PhD in Tourism; jvidal@ualg.pt. 2 The legal nature of airport slots has been discussed but we defend that the existence of a given slot allocated to an airline carrier should not mean any kind of property, but a right granted to use an airport.
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