The European Union will suspend a rule requiring airlines to run most of their scheduled services or else forfeit landing slots, to give carriers some breathing space as the coronavirus crisis deepens, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen has said.
The decision came as the world's airlines scrambled to deal with the worsening virus epidemic and Italy's lockdown, which have hammered passenger numbers and forced the cancellation of thousands of flights.
Ms Von der Leyen, European Commission president, said the suspension of the rule would do away with "ghost flights" where airlines fly almost empty planes simply to keep their slots.
"The Commission will put forward, very rapidly, legislation," she said. "We want to make it easier for airlines to keep their airport slot even if they do not operate flights in those slots because of the declining traffic.
"This temporary measure helps our industry but it also helps our environment. It will relieve the pressure on aviation industry and in particular on smaller airline companies."
The EU chief did not say how long the suspension of the rule would last.
Germany had joined calls for Brussels to relax the rules, saying that it would be harmful both environmentally and financially to persist.
"In order not to lose their slots, airlines have to fly with almost empty aircraft through the crisis," a spokesman for the economy ministry said in a statement emailed to Reuters.
It comes after Virgin Atlantic admitted flying planes that are "almost empty" in order to keep take-off and landing slots despite demand plummeting due to the coronavirus.
The airline's chief executive Shai Weiss said the airline is being "forced" to continue with flights because rules about slot allocation have not been relaxed.
Slots at capacity-constrained airports such as Heathrow can be worth millions of pounds.
The regulation was already removed for routes serving mainland China and Hong Kong due to the outbreak of Covid-19.
UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps wrote to the European Commission yesterday, urging it to allow "flexibility and adaptability" in relation to slots.
Aircraft being flown near-empty to keep slots "would be entirely out of step with both the UK's and the European Union's climate commitments", he added.
