The Economist recently ran two articles on slots. https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/12/economist-explains-0 https://www.economist.com/blo

The Economist recently ran two articles on slots. https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/12/economist-explains-0 https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/12/e... https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21731390-heres-how-fix-it-system-allocating-airport-slots-broken https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21731390-heres-how-fi... The slots seem to cost no actual money. They are however valuable because they generate money and are scarce. IIRC they proposed auctioning them off instead of using the current system. There was a letter in a later issue arguing against that: https://www.economist.com/news/letters/21731801-tpp-airports-plea-bargaining-protestantism-manure-letters-editor https://www.economist.com/news/letters/21731801-tpp-airports...