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Aviation glossary

Coordinated airport

Also: Level 3 airport, slot-coordinated airport, slot-constrained airport

Airports

Airport where capacity falls short of demand, so landing or taking off there requires a slot allocated by an independent coordinator.

What it is

The worldwide slot guidelines published by IATA together with airports classify airports into three levels. At Level 1 capacity is sufficient; at Level 2, schedules facilitated, a facilitator adjusts timetables by agreement to avoid peaks; and at Level 3, the coordinated airports, nobody may operate without a slot. London Heathrow and Frankfurt are examples.

The coordinator, independent of both airports and airlines, allocates slots twice a year, ahead of each season, on neutral and transparent principles. Incumbent airlines keep their historic series if they have used them sufficiently, and a share of the slots that become available is reserved for new entrants. In the European Union the process is governed by EU regulation.

Related terms

SlotPermission to land or take off at a congested airport on a given date and time, or a departure time allocated to manage the flow of air traffic. IATATrade association representing a large share of the world's airlines, which sets common commercial and operational standards for air transport. Scheduled serviceFlight or series of flights operated to a published timetable, open for sale to the public and repeated systematically between two or more points. HubAirport where an airline concentrates its flights and times its schedule so that passengers and cargo from many cities can connect with one another.
Whole glossary

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This page was last updated on October 9, 2026

APA

Vuelopedia. (2026, October 9). Coordinated airport. Retrieved October 20, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/coordinated-airport

MLA

“Coordinated airport.” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 9 Oct. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/coordinated-airport. Accessed 20 Oct. 2026.

Chicago

Vuelopedia. “Coordinated airport.” Fundación Poderia. Last modified October 9, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/coordinated-airport.

Harvard

Vuelopedia (2026) Coordinated airport. Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/coordinated-airport (Accessed: 20 October 2026).

BibTeX

@misc{vuelopedia_en_glossary_coordinated_airport,
  author       = {{Vuelopedia}},
  title        = {{Coordinated airport}},
  publisher    = {Fundación Poderia},
  year         = {2026},
  date         = {2026-10-09},
  url          = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/coordinated-airport},
  howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/coordinated-airport}},
  urldate      = {2026-10-20},
  note         = {Accessed 2026-10-20}
}

Wikipedia

{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/coordinated-airport |title=Coordinated airport |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-10-09 |access-date=2026-10-20 |language=en}}

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