Aviation Intelligence Reporter September 2024
- 2024 Season 2: The Sequel
- Slots Get Political
- The Pilotless Aircraft Cockpit: Closer Than You Think
- Spanish Competition Authority has Reservations about Booking.com
- Underthinking Overtourism
- Aviation Intelligence Reporter Annual Crossword 016 – Solution
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2024 The Autumn Season: The Sequel
The umbrellas are being put away; the beach bars are closing. Europe is getting back to work. Here comes the Autumn Season. Unfortunately, it seems that Autumm season of the 2024 Aviation Show is going to channel the general temper of our times: polarisation. The players are lining up on their side of the barricades, ready to blame the other side for whatever it is that is likely to go wrong. It makes for great viewing, on catch-up, but if you are in the trenches, required to watch each episode live, it might get bloody.
Slots Get Political
To incumbent airlines, slots are simply an operational thing. No big deal, nothing to see here, nothing to worry about. Within airlines, the slots guys are the ones with different colour pens in their shirt pockets. They rush about, planning their next IATA slot conference. At the apex of the IATA slot organisation, if that is not too feeble a word for that edifice, is the Slot Conference Steering Group. The first agenda item at every Steering Group meeting is the synchronisation of diaries to plan the next meeting. That done, it is down to business. Peak IATA.
The Pilotless Aircraft Cockpit: Closer Than You Think
By Philip Butterworth-Hayes – Editorial Director Unmanned Publications
Manufacturers of slide rules (google, please, if you do not know what these are) would, by 1974, have realised the writing was on the wall. At the first sight of a pocket calculator (again, google, please, if needed) they would have known with dread in their hearts that their business was dust. Overnight. There was no path for them to fight back. There was no resistance organised, a campaign to save our slide rule, to laugh when data, incorrectly entered, produced a laughable outcome. No intensive lobbying campaign to keep engineers and mathematicians cleaving to the good old ways, the good old days. Slide rulers were wonderful things. Aesthetically pleasing, portable, functional and to work them, their operators needed a very solid grounding in the underlying principles of mathematics. The risk of error was low, because each operator was focused on the process and had a fair idea of the magnitude of the answer.
Spanish Competition Authority has Reservations about Booking.com
Delighting Spanish hoteliers specifically, and the European hotel industry more broadly, Spain’s competition watchdog, the CNMC, has hit Booking.com with a record-breaking €413 million fine for abusing its overwhelmingly dominant market position. The fine is 27.5% of Booking.com’ s net income in Q2 2024, making it the most substantial admonishment of Booking.com’ s practices anywhere, ever, to use the sort of hyperbole that Booking.com would appreciate.
Underthinking Overtourism
The folding of the umbrellas, the closing of the beach bars, means that the height of the European tourism season is ending, but 2024 proved to be the year that was for Europe’s tourists. In Málaga, city streets and businesses were littered with stickers declaring residents’ true feelings about the millions of tourists: ‘This used to be my home’ and ‘stinking of tourists’ were the politer ones. ‘Go fucking home’, might have been more grammatically offensive, but made residents’ heartfelt emotions clear. Is it any wonder?
