London Heathrow's slot machine

With British Midland up for sale and with the Irish government seeking to offload 25 per cent of its national carrier, Aer Lingus, there is an increased focus on the high cost of obtaining limited landing rights at London's Heathrow Airport. Landing slots at Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport, are so valuable that companies can spend years waiting or cough up millions of pounds to get aircraft into the facility. US-based carrier Continental paid $209 million (Dh767.6 million) for four pairs of slots to begin a daily service to Houston and Newark in 2008. Currently, the airport is operating at near full capacity and airlines flying there are loathe to give up their valuable slots without new operators paying huge dividends. "With Heathrow Airport operating at some 98 per cent of its total capacity, slots are hard to come by and when they do infrequently become available, they command several millions of pounds each and do not stay unsold for very long," explained Saj Ahmad, a London-based aviation analyst. "There's always a host of buyers ready to pounce on them," he said. Frenzied competition "With British Airways commanding some 42 per cent of all Heathrow slots, the pace of competition for additional slots is frenzied and their exclusivity almost always drives up prices, but even so this is not a deterrent to airlines. It would be highly surprising to find any airline operating at London Heathrow that wouldn't want more slots." The issue of slots has been raised by Richard Branson, the billionaire owner of Virgin Atlantic, who is cautioning regulators in the United Kingdom to review Lufthansa's sale of six British Midland slots to British Airways last week. Lufthansa acquired British Midland in 2009 but the small regional carrier lost €120 million (Dh589.8 million) in the first six months of this year. Its most valuable asset may be its landing slots at Heathrow, and the company has flown near-empty planes into the airport to keep those slots open. Aer Lingus operates 23 slots through its regular daily service to Heathrow. But with the Irish government having received a €85 billion bailout from the IMF and the European Central Bank, it is trying to sell assets and trim costs as part of tax and austerity measures. Leo Varadkar, Ireland's transport minister, says he has received offers from airlines and investment funds worth €80 million so far for the government's 25 per stake in Aer Lingus. While the price British Airways paid for the six BMI slots last week hasn't been revealed, Credit Suisse analysts estimate the price between €100 million and €150 million. "Aer Lingus has a small, 3.5 per cent slot-holding at Heathrow. While this does give them added value, like BMI, the airline is in need of massive overhaul and has billions of dollars worth of new airplanes that need to be financed," Ahmad said. "Equally, since withdrawing from the oneworld alliance, Aer Lingus has gone backwards — dropping routes and decreasing its size." "And now it's looking to rejoin an airline alliance again. Ryanair has tried and failed twice before to secure what it doesn't own of Aer Lingus and it seems just as with BMI, there aren't enough investors out there that want to engage and buy out such a large chunk of the business knowing that more money will be needed to fix its problems," he said. "The LHR slots are indeed worth buying into Aer Lingus, but without the power to overhaul the airline, the business rationale becomes less compelling." While the European carriers are slugging it out over the few slots at Heathrow, both Emirates and Etihad airways seem content for now with the status quo. "Between Emirates and Etihad, their growth hasn't been negatively affected by the lack of Heathrow slots," Ahmad said. "With both airlines expanding their operations in North America, Africa, Asia and Australasia, neither of them are held to ransom by the slot constraints at LHR," he said. "Emirates has it a little easier in that it now deploys bigger Airbus A380s to the airport and is also likely to be emulated by Etihad when they take delivery of their first superjumbo later in this decade. We shouldn't really rule out either airline possibly buying BMI or taking a stake in Aer Lingus, if only to supplement their existing slots." Both Emirates and Etihad declined to comment on their access to Heathrow when contacted by Gulf News. Combined presence "Both carriers still have a combined presence of just 1.5 per cent at LHR, both would like to grow this foothold as quickly as is possible," Ahmad said. "But when you consider the fact that both airlines are waiting on hundreds of A380, 787, and A350XWB orders while at the same time expanding their presence in new markets, buying up additional LHR slots may leave them vulnerable if they don't have the airplanes to service these additional slots, so there's certainly no need to bit the panic button just yet," he added. "And with Emirates and Etihad making a splash in places like Manchester where capacity is readily available, they needn't worry too much about the quagmire that a congested LHR brings." For now, BA is set to capitalise on BMI's breakup. "BA's slot holding at Heathrow is far less than that of Air France-KLM at Paris Charles De Gaulle or Lufthansa at Frankfurt, so unless regulators can find justifiable grounds to stymie this deal, there's a good chance BA could end up not just removing a domestic rival, but actually gaining a bigger chunk of slots at arguably the world's busiest international airport," Ahmad said.