Several recent changes in procedures at Geneva Airport are expected to improve its efficiency and capacity for aircraft, while cutting down on recurrent slot misuse. The revisions to the General Aviation PPR system, which took effect on December 1, reduce the period for slot reservations from 21 days to five days ahead of the flight. Users will still be able to view the available capacity up to 21 days in advance, and reservations will be available on a continued rolling basis.
To improve the use of the available capacity at the airport and avoid speculative slot reservations, a mandatory match between flight plans and PPR will be implemented during the first quarter of 2018 and will require operators to file a valid flight plan with Eurocontrol prior to receiving an airport slot. Any PPR that does not correspond to a valid flight plan will be cancelled.
Lastly, due to construction planned for the P48 parking area, the airport will experience a temporary reduction in aircraft parking. That may require private aircraft on the remaining north and south aprons to be towed into and out of their parking spaces due to the “densified” parking model. According to the airport authority, both areas will require a mandatory pushback operation for departures. Once the construction in P48 is completed in 2019, the airport will continue the high-density parking protocols as a means of increasing its overall aircraft parking capacity.
“Taken together, these changes will be very helpful to business aviation,” explained Olga Krasowska, the European Business Aviation Association’s manager of airport operations. She added that the new procedures are being tested with operator input and might evolve over time to improve efficiency.
“Geneva, host city of the European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition (EBACE), has been a long-time supporter of business aviation, and the authorities there understand the value of business aviation to the city and region,” noted Doug Carr, NBAA’s vice president of regulatory and international affairs. “NBAA will work with our partners at the Geneva Airport and in Europe to ensure that the new system reflects the operational needs of the business aviation community.”