Draft Airports Slot Allocation (Alleviation of Usage Requirements) (No. 3) Regulations 2022

Mike Kane Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 General Committees

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, after a historic weekend when Bolton Wanderers beat Accrington Stanley 3-2. You must be delighted. We also have a new Prime Minister-designate, and Government Members could not look glummer. Everybody should cheer up and wait by their phones: there could be a call coming their way any time soon.

The UK aviation sector was enormously impacted by the covid-19 pandemic. As the Minister said, 99% of all flights were grounded almost overnight. It was unbelievable really. The industry has started to recover but is still not back to where it was. The powers in the statutory instrument will enable carriers to better plan schedules and provide flexibility, while reducing the risk of short-notice cancellations. I hope that throughout the House we agree that the same-day cancellations that we have seen lately in the airline industry should never happen.

I will be brief as we will not oppose the regulations. We understand the significant challenges that the pandemic brought to the sector. Since March 2020 it has been necessary to reduce the 80:20 rule to 70:30. The reasons are multiple. When the skies reopened, there were issues with staffing at airports that were unprepared for the volume of travellers who wanted to fly again for holidays or to visit family, and it was necessary to intervene to protect consumers—although one might argue that had an aviation sectoral deal been provided, the jobs lost would have been retained and we would not have had to intervene again.

In six days, airlines will be in the winter season and will be flying winter timetables. As it stands, levels of air traffic are still not up to pre-pandemic levels, hovering somewhere around 80% of the levels for the corresponding period. We would not want to see airlines flying almost-empty flights in order to retain their slots. We do not want to see aviation fuel burn for no reason as ghost flights take off to protect grandfather rights to a slot.

I note that the consultation was carried out some time ago, from May to June 2022. At that time the country and the sector were in a very different position, but I will not labour the point about the chaos in airports that was front-page news for far too long. I note that there were a variety of responses from airlines and airports. Would it be possible for the Minister to apprise us of the formula used to arrive at the 70:30 requirement and the metrics used to do so? Will there be a retrospective assessment to see whether the change to 70:30 was correct?

Will the Minister assure me that, should we find ourselves meeting to discuss this matter again before the release of the summer 2023 timetables, the Government will re-consult? I very much hope that it will be unnecessary to do so or for Government to intervene, but we must not rule it out entirely. I hope that a full retrospective assessment and full consultation would be carried out.

Let me make a few points before I finish. This is not my first discussion of this nature since I came into my post, and I am sure it will not be the last. I wish to take the opportunity, as I do every time we discuss aviation, to make the case for airspace modernisation, the lack of which also prevents cleaner, greener, point-to-point flights. When will we see some progress? When we will see a real commitment to something on which the whole industry agrees and which would offer so many benefits? Perhaps the Minister could advise us as to what is causing the delay to the much-needed modernisation of our airspace in the United Kingdom?