Aviation Intelligence Reporter July 2022. The AGM Edition
- The IATA AGM: Let Them Eat Cake
- The CANSO AGM: Clear Skies Ahead? No, Wait…
- The ACI Europe AGM: All Roads Lead to Rome
- Fit for 55: Nameless Briefing Notes and Shameless Lobbying
- The Global (Tourism) Village
- UAM: One Small Step (back) for the USA; One Giant Leap for Asia
- Is Anyone Auditing all that State Aid?
- The Poacher: Gamekeeper Interface. Airports Take Slots In-House
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The IATA AGM: Let Them Eat Cake
Agreeing to sponsor IATA’s annual hoe-down is not a decision to be taken lightly. The event takes a year of intense planning, of focusing on some seemingly trivial details – for the marketing team of the sponsor it is a chore to be got through; for the marketing team of IATA, it is what they live for – and needing to spend quite a lot of money. For the last few austere years, there have been savings to be had, and expenses to be excused, by using Zoom. There was no need for a Gala Dinner, or its entertainment, for example.
The CANSO AGM: Clear Skies Ahead? No, Wait…
CANSO’s solution to the AGM-in-a-time-of-pandemic dilemma has been to piggy-back its AGM to the annual World ATM Congress in Madrid. That takes all the strain off finding a host-in-a-time-of-pandemic and reduces costs all round, particularly as the only social event organised required a paid ticket to enter. No risk of Kylie or JLo there. CANSO in fact has hosts lined up for at least their next two AGMs, and they intend to break the nexus with the World ATM Congress in more ways than one next year. That is because just before the event started, we were told that it was to be the last. That nexus is no more. This came as a shock to most attendees, suddenly now having to choose between exhibiting or attending a CANSO sponsored event next year in Geneva – Airspace World – or an ATCA sponsored one in Washington DC – ATCA Global – or, of course, going to, and exhibiting at, both. Especially if you want a luxury like, say, water.
The ACI Europe AGM: All Roads Lead to Rome
The final leg of the week-long triathlon took us to Rome. Queues being measured not in time but in kilometres snaked around the terminals at Fiumicino as delegates arrived. So too did the news that around Europe, airports were imposing new capacity limits on the summer season. That is within the current slot rules, in that each airport declares a capacity for the airport. What was unusual was the timing of the changes. Normally, these things are ironed out well ahead of the season starting. So, it was a bullish DG, Olivier Jankovic, that gave his State of the Industry address.
Fit for 55: Nameless Briefing Notes and Shameless Lobbying
As mentioned last month, notwithstanding all the work the lobbyists for the legacy carriers did to try to persuade the European Parliament not to expand and strengthen the Emission Trading System for aviation, expand and strengthen it the Parliament did. So the lobbyists decided to expand and strengthen their lobbying efforts by focusing on the European Council, which met at the end of June, to discuss the Parliament’s proposals. It is the Council that disposes. So, to derail the Parliament’s work one needs to wheel out the big guns.
The Global (Tourism) Village
Hand up if you have been to Bkassine in Lebanon, Cumeada in Portugal, Misfat Al Abriyeen in Oman, or Ollantaytambo, in Peru. If not yet, you might go there soon, because these villages are part of a new Best Tourism Villages programme, organised by the UN World Tourist Organization. The campaign aims to promote the best of rural and local development and sustainable tourism, placing high value on the interplay between destination travel, gastronomy, wine tourism, and intellectual property rights asserted by the UNWTO’s member states to ‘protect and value’ local products and processes. Particularly wine, apparently.
UAM: One Small Step (back) for the USA; One Giant Leap for Asia
The last few weeks has seen the passenger-carrying urban air mobility (UAM) market (which does not yet exist but could do so in 2024) pivot away from North America and head east to Asia. In late June, EHang, a Chinese autonomous aerial vehicle company, announced it had received an initial purchase order for five EHang EH216 AAVs from Tianxingjian Cultural Tourism Investment and Development LLC, owned by the Jishou city government in Hunan province, to fly tourists through the Aizhai Wonder Tourist Area in Jishou. EHang has been flying tourists around scenic parts of China since at least 2020, when it began sightseeing trial flights around the Fisherman’s Wharf area in Yantai, in Shandong.
Is Anyone Auditing all that State Aid?
By Jacques Mason – Independent Aviation Consultant
When the pandemic struck, the aviation industry, with the airlines well to the front, went racing to their national governments demanding bail outs. With little by way of a critical framework – do not save a lost cause; set recovery programmes in place; make sure the money is to be repaid – the money was thrown with abandon from the roofs of treasuries and chancelleries around Europe. It was our money, but as far as can be seen, there has been little, very little done to audit that largesse. No one seems to want to be responsible for those panicked decisions.
The Poacher: Gamekeeper Interface. Airports Take Slots In-House
In the good old days, those halcyon days of yore – about 2019 or so – it was easy to work out how a slot discussion would go: airports would complain about how they were being treated; airlines would snigger and go on doing what they intended to do anyway; regulators muttered away about doing something modern and sensible and reformish. Thus was the great circle of life kept in harmony and balance. But as we have learnt, harmony and balance can be thrown akilter with the introduction of a virulent virus. The traditional ways need to be rethought, or built back better, as we entertained ourselves by pretending we were doing for a while.