Fraport to Increase Slot Capacity at Frankfurt Airport in 2004 - Airport Coordinator of Germany Determines Allocation of Slots to Airlines
Frankfurt, Germany (ots)
Fraport AG (FSE: FRA), the owner and manager of Frankfurt Airport (FRA), and its main customer Deutsche Lufthansa have agreed on the number of aircraft movements (take-off and landing slots) that should be available for the 2004 Summer Timetable - for all airlines not just Lufthansa. Specifically, the compromise agreement calls for two additional slots per hour in the morning and one additional slot per hour in the afternoon, commencing with the new summer timetable that goes into effect in the spring of 2004. Slots are the scheduled time windows for take-offs (departures) and landings (arrivals) of aircraft at an airport. At FRA and 16 other German airports, slots are allocated by the Airport Coordinator of Germany (www.fhkd.org). This organization is directly accountable to the German Federal Ministry of Transport. The planned increase in slots now has to be approved by the responsible government departments.
Fraport creates but does not allocate slots. Utilizing its operational and technological know-how, Fraport has been able to increase incrementally the coordinated hourly capacity of the existing runway system at FRA in recent years. Under the agreement, FRA's official coordinated runway capacity for flight scheduling will increase in the next summer timetable period: to 80 aircraft movements per hour (up from 78 per hour currently) between 06:00 and 14:00; and to 81 aircraft movements per hour (up from 80 per hour) between 14:00 and 22:00. The Board of Airline Representatives in Germany (BARIG) also supports this arrangement.
Fraport's executive board chairman Dr. Wilhelm Bender said that with this compromise agreement both parties have underscored their mutual interest in demand-oriented growth at Germany's biggest airport. He indicated that the need to increase the capacity of FRA's existing runway system - through optimizing infrastructure and implementing increasingly sophisticated handling procedures before the planned new Northwest Landing Runway goes into operation - was already emphasized during the mediation process on airport expansion.
Contact:
Fraport AG
Frankfurt Airport Services Worldwide
Robert A. Payne
Manager International Press
60547 Frankfurt am Main
Germany
Phone: +49/69/690-78547
Fax: +49/69/690-60548
E-Mail: r.payne@fraport.de
Internet: http://www.fraport.com