Apr. 2, 2020 - The European Union has relaxed its 80-20 slot rules for the peak summer season of 2020 following multiple EU based airlines lobbying for the Union to relax regulations amid the COVID-19 pandemic situation. This comes after multiple countries, including the United States’s FAA, the U.A.E, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Ghana have relaxed its 80-20 slot rules.
The 80-20 rule is effectively slot usage allocation whereby a particular airline that holds the slots at a particular airport has to use its allocated slot 80% of the time or risk losing it and can only have a 20% leeway in having the slot empty. As a result multiple airlines are still flying ghost flights, void of passengers to major airports such as JFK in New York to maintain their slots and not lose them. To help mitigate the costs to the airlines during this time, multiple government agencies have stepped up and dropped the 80-20 rule.
The EU is relaxing their rules until the end of Summer 2020 which is in June, the U.A.E till May and the other countries such as Ghana and Morocco until the end of 2020.