In March this year ONE in 10 of all scheduled Sydney to Melbourne flights were cancelled. With this sky-high number of tickets sold for flights that were never intended to be flown, critics and devo travellers alike are calling for Sydney airport to put their cooked flight scheduling system in the bin.
We’ve all felt the depression of having a flight cancelled and wouldn’t wish it on our worst enemy, so surely airlines selling tickets for flights they never planned on flying must actually hate us, right? Well, turns out it could be due to something called ‘slot hoarding’ which is nowhere near as dirty as it sounds (sorry).
Sydney Airport has some of the strictest rules in the world of any airport, with harsh regulations on when flights can be made during the day to limit noise pollution, but also to stop airlines having a monopoly on available flights.
The available flight ‘slots’ airlines can sell tickets for are given out twice a year, which means airlines bid for all the best times and try to save as many as they can to cock(pit)-block their competition from selling seats. In order to prevent this, Sydney airport dictates that if the airline doesn’t fly at least 80 per cent of the flights in a slot, they can lose it to a rival airline.
TLDR: the mass-booking of flight slots to stop competition selling any flights is called slot hoarding, and it’s toxic af.
Despite the tough rules to prevent this plane wrong behaviour, slot hoarding seems to be the only thing the airlines don’t plan on cancelling.
Calls have been made from small airlines, critics, and literally anyone wanting to fly to Melbs for the government to step in and add some legislation to put an end to the petty practice of slot hoarding, with evidence that it’s damaging to everyone involved.
Sydney Airport chief executive Geoff Culbert called for government action due to how it’s hurting the travel industry, saying “high cancellation rates on popular domestic routes are suppressing demand.”
Unfortunately the government has refrained from stepping in on the issue, but hopefully something is done soon, otherwise it’s a long walk from Syd to Melb!
Image credit: 9 News.
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