Madhouse24

Airline members of the SkyTeam alliance committed to surrendering slots at certain European airports to win European Commission approval for deeper intra-alliance cooperation, according to an EC statement. "The Commission is concerned that cooperation agreed by Aeromexico, Alitalia, CSA Czech Airlines, Delta Air Lines, KLM, Korean Air, Northwest Airlines and Air France could infringe the EC Treaty's ban on restrictive business practices on a number of city pairs," EC explained. In addition to handing over take-off and landing slots, the SkyTeam airlines agreed to form interline agreements with new entrant carriers in those city pairs. Interested parties have one month to file comments with the Commission. SkyTeam also is seeking antitrust approval from U.S. regulators as Air France and Delta prepare to implement their transatlantic joint venture, announced this week.

sbm12

AF is basically giving the slots to their US-based partners in exchange for code-share rights and revenue sharing on the flights operated using those slots. AF will operate LAX-LHR while DL will operate ATL/JKF/SLC-LHR and both carriers will have their codes on the flights and share in the revenue.

These flights are likely to be much more profitable than the CDG-LHR (or whatever intra-Europe route it is) segments that they're currently used for.

YVR Cockroach

I'm not too sure if it's transferring LHR slots to an alliance partner to use (which I don't really see as alleviting restrictive trade practices), but giving up slots at CDG and AMS to new entrants not in the ST alliance. The E.U. demand appears similar to what was demanded of AA and BA by regulators as a condition of their proposed alliance in the late '90s.