Aviation Intelligence Reporter June 2023
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EBACE: The Peasants Are Revolting
The business aviation community has long prided itself on being at the vanguard of developments in aviation. From winglets to SAFs, from heads-up avionics to hold space designed to fit golf clubs, biz-av wants you to know that it is doing the hard yards, learning what needs to be learnt, to make it easy for their commercial brethren. You will be pleased to learn that EBACE lived up to its reputation in May.
EASA Hitchhikes Along the Artificial Intelligence Road, Map in Hand
AI is having a moment, finding its way into nearly every sector and industry. Notwithstanding sections of the aviation workforce being determined to keep themselves in the loop, aviation will not be an exception. In fact, EASA has been investigating AI in aviation since 2018, when a task force developed its Roadmap 1.0. It seems remarkable that all that computing power and it will still need a roadmap to navigate, but maybe that is one of the mysteries for the Brave New World that approaches to untangle. However, the rate at which AI has come towards us, often along previously unmarked, unimaged, tracks, necessitated the creation of Roadmap 2.0, released recently. The RM2 bounces off the proposed EU AI Act of 2021, which ranks AI into three tiers, based on potential risk: ‘(i) unacceptable risk, (ii) high risk, and (iii) low or minimal risk’. Among its provisions is a risk assessment based on human oversight, data governance practices, transparency and traceability, all leading to a potential ban on unacceptable AI.
Ryanair: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied in Luxembourg
It is not accurate to call the remarkable cascade of victories Ryanair achieved at the European Court of Justice in May Pyrrhic, because a Pyrrhic victory is one that causes such damage to the winner as to prevent any further advance. King Pyrrhus beat the Romans twice, in 280 and 279 BC, but the toll on his army was so great that he had to retreat. Plutarch noted that another victory would utterly undo him. That is not the mood in Team Ryanair at all. They feel that they are on a roll. The ECJ ruled, in four separate judgements, that the decisions of the Commission to turn a blind eye to the State Aid paid by the Scandinavian states, Germany, Malta and Italy to their carriers during the pandemic were wrong. Those payments breached European State Aid guidelines.
Flying in the Future – All Smoke and Mirrors?
IATA attended the Routes Europe conference in Łódź in early May. This is, in itself, remarkable, because if you ever want evidence of airport competition, go to a Routes conference. Airports try desperately to attract airlines to their runway. They show up having done significant analysis and planning for each airline they present to, explaining how their airport will enhance the airline’s network and passenger flows. There is also open, if sotto voce, conversations about discounts, charges and other matters that cut to the heart of competition. To blithely dismiss airport competition as Not A Thing after seeing a Routes is impossible. But IATA is a crowd they cannot convince. So ACI-Europe felt the need to release another study on the topic to reinforce the point. It is backed up by an in-depth interview with ACI-Europe’s DG, Olivier Jankovec, and the study’s author, Dan Elliot. Full disclosure, Aviation Advocacy was also involved.
Relax, Our Self-Appointed Guardians of Competition Are Here
You may not have noticed, but the Competitiveness Council met in May. It has set as one of its goals ‘long-term competitiveness’. This was a moment too tempting for that Astroturf organisation, the Europeans four Fair Competition, our self-appointed guardians of fair European competition, to miss. They fired up both LinkedIn and Twitter and set about proving, yet again, that they are the Gang That Cannot Shoot Straight.
The LinkedIn post is worthy of particular study:
Lufthansa Takes on Italy: We Have Seen This Before
Not since Hannibal has anyone tried to take on Italy quite so directly. Alaric, the leader of the Visigoths gave it a good shake in 410, but that was a quick and political campaign aimed solely on Rome, as he tried to obtain land and justice for his people, who hailed from what we now call Romania. He was hampered by being illiterate – one of the many ways the Romans kept the colonies down – so his was not to write prose in praise of himself and his quest, unlike Julius Caesar before him. Nor did he think to take an eminent historian with him to set down in writing his motivation and bravery. Hannibal, on the other hand, was after power and loot. He was literate but we only have his letters home to help us. He sprang the surprise of all surprises by marching into battle with elephants, having first brought them from India, via modern day Tunisia, and then from Spain all the way to Italy, via the Alps. After the element of surprise was sprung, the war settled into a two-year slugfest where Hannibal’s scorched earth strategy backfired. He ended up with no food for his soldiers.
Tags: Airlines, Airports, ATM, Business Aviation, Competition, Environment