What are the priorities of Assoclearance, the association responsible for the management of National airport slots, in this time of suffering for air transport?

Assoclearance performs mainly operational activities, and thus its priorities are constantly the same, at all times and most especially in times of crisis: improving operational efficiency in the use of airport infrastructures and developing ever more the quality of the service offer.

All of this in a context of cost reduction, similarly to the objectives pursued during the last three years of management.

The next three years will be interested by changes in the regulations on European airport slot management activities. Presumably, such changes will be approved by the European Parliament and Council within the current year.

Then, the changes will have to be progressively implemented in the ordinary management activity, thus strengthening technological systems even further.

Thus, we will be concentrated on realizing an innovation that might lead us to enhancing processes related to airport slot management, focusing on a development consisting of interoperability among the various parts participating in air transport operating cycle (i.e. airport coordinators like Assoclearance, airlines, air navigation service providers like Enav and airport managers).

The aviation world, especially the integrated operational planning sector, has been left behind as compared to what modern technologies might have allowed to be realized in terms of processes managed jointly by the different actors interested in air transport operations.

After many years of experience in operational responsibilities in ENAV, how do you view the actual situation of European ATMs?

Notwithstanding the efforts undertaken in the past to reduce fragmentation in continental air transport operation management, there are still gaps and deficits that create management problems, especially in the presence of conditions that deviate from the normal operational development, and make it hard to take full advantage of the existing capacities.
Changes to be supported, both on National and European level, should aim at an increased organizational integration among all actors that participate in the operating cycle of continental air transport.
Europe and its Member Countries must find effective solutions to air traffic growth, with the objective also of reducing operating expenses related to the management of infrastructures used in air transport.
Process integration, standardization and interoperability are the basis of the operating and technological changes for the optimal use of the existing capacities, in a context in which the airport will be ever more considered as one of the element of an integrated network made up of both airport and air space management.
A framework, of considerable reorganizational efforts of all the operational compartments aimed at eliminating, by means of new-generation technological systems, process fragmentations that are still persisting both on National and Continental level, in which the real challenge will be a synchronized implementation of new-generation technologies among all actors insisting on the air transport operating cycle (i.e. airlines, management companies, handlers, air traffic service providers, coordinators of slot allocation, etc.).
All of this while always sticking to the principle of clear demarcation between subjects in charge of regulation/controls and service providers. There is therefore a need to pursue a principle of horizontal, not vertical, integration.

What happens to the slots allocated to an airline that goes bankrupt?

If that company, in some form of corporate structure, demonstrates to be willing to try and recover the operational activity, it will be granted a period of about one year (that is, two subsequent seasons of coordination) to attempt the recovery.
During such a period, the interested slots may be temporarily allocated without historic rights to other carriers interested in operating on the suspended routes.

Don't you miss communicating with pilots over headphones?

Operational activities in the aviation environment have a peculiar fascination and leave a nonfading mark on those who are and were fortunate enough to participate.
A plane flies in the skies, it's the fastest means of transport and, above all, can't stop. Anything involving its operation must be determined with great precision and with timings constantly challenging man's attitude to quick decision-making, even in vital matters, and in a sphere in which he is often faced with situations obliging him to explore his limits.
Those who for a long period of time have been exposed to such conditions are compelled to transform themselves and acquire a positively peculiar mentality and behavior from which it's no more possible to part later.