About
On 5 August 2013, the Ministry of Equipment, Transport and Logistics issued Circular No. 2399 setting out the rules for allocating slots in the international airport systems of the Kingdom of Morocco, following the recommendation of the CMN & RBA airport coordination committee of 17 June 2013 to classify CMN and RBA as fully coordinated airports (IATA Level 3). This circular was amended by Circular No. 2016 of 2 July 2020 and then by Circular No. 175 of 15 January 2026. Marrakech Ménara airport was also declared coordinated.
This decision followed the sharp increase in air service observed at all the Kingdom's airports after the liberalisation of air transport, which led to real congestion at Casablanca Mohammed V, Marrakech Ménara and Rabat-Salé airports.
Since the signing of the Open Sky agreement, Morocco has seen a sharp increase in air service across all the Kingdom's airports, averaging +13% per year between 2005 and 2013.
Casablanca airport was particularly affected by congestion: as early as summer 2012, peak weekly departures in the 10:30-12:40 window reached 113 (close to 23 million passengers per year for a capacity of 6.5 million); by summer 2013 they reached 166 (+47%, i.e. close to 33 million passengers), with no change in airport capacity.
Rabat-Salé airport, with mixed civil and military use, handles many official, VIP and business flights and serves as an alternate airport for Casablanca. The saturation of the Casablanca-Rabat system degraded service quality, punctuality and passenger comfort (check-in, police and security screening, boarding lounges, baggage delivery).
In response, the Government classified Casablanca and Rabat-Salé airports at IATA Level 3, setting up a Coordinator and a Coordination Committee, and chose to treat Casablanca and Rabat-Salé as a single airport system in order to optimise slot organisation between the two airports.