Aviation Intelligence Reporter October 2026
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What is Aviation’s P(Doom)?
What is your P(doom)? No, no guessing. You are supposed to know this. Your P(doom) is your view on the probability of existential disaster arising within the foreseeable future from the unbridled use of AI. Worryingly, the more you know about AI, the higher your P(doom) is likely to be. The doomsters and the gloomsters have been having quite a field day recently, gleefully predicting The End Of The World As We Know It. Remarkably, these doomsters and gloomsters all work in AI, or are AI adjacent. They all agree that the best place to survive Armageddon is New Zealand. Whether this is because the beaches/wine/sailing/roast lamb is better in NZ, or because so little happens in NZ that every day feels like a week, thus stretching the time-space continuum concept of available time, is not clear. Nonetheless, the supposed brains of AI (a two-layer oxymoron) are now very scared. So scared, in fact, they want regulation.
Let’s Not Talk About Slots, Baby
Once upon a time, a paper from either the airports or the airlines about slots would fire up months of, often quite acrimonious, debate. We might have turned the corner. ACI World, which has the carriage of slots policy for the airports’ associations – the others are regional bodies and slot policy is, by error of history, a global thing – released a new, extensive Slot Policy White Paper. In the good old days, we would have risked whiplash watching IATA fire back its response. So far, crickets. It looks like IATA’s position is to not dignify the White Paper with a response. Has nobody a sense of tradition?
NATS’ Service Issues: Calling Project Manager Sisyphus By Jacques Mason – Independent Aviation Analyst
We reported in March this year that there is increasing risk of the UK ANSP, UK NATS’, systems failing due to its reliance on outdated technology. We did not expect further failures quite so soon, but the burden of prophesy is ever being unable to influence the outcome. Project manager Sisyphus is now in the doghouse, which is an uncomfortable position to be in when the dog is Cerberus and has three heads. Worse than this, the airline gods are calling for Sisyphus’ boss to be retired, albeit with a large pension.
Overtourism, Overheads
The persistent demand for travel encourages overtourism fatalism. If protests, rising prices and deteriorating relations with locals are not enough to dampen travel to overtouristed areas, the temptation is to assume the inevitable: new accommodation models; business adaptation; a rampant tourism industry. There is an assumption at the heart of the problem. The difficulty of controlling tourism leaves little meaningful choice about how it develops.
Recent reports from Spain illustrate the problem. TravelDailyNews describes continuing protests over tourism’s effects on housing and local communities in the same breath as strong British demand for Spanish holidays. Research shows 72% of British respondents acknowledged breaking a (courteous) local custom while travelling. Poor behaviour is one explanation for local resentment. However, it does not explain all local upset. A destination can receive courteous visitors and still take on more tourism than its housing, infrastructure, or residents can reasonably sustain.
Aviation, Science and Emissions: On the Trail of Contrails
The Aviation Intelligence Reporter has many subscribers and readers from the USA, and welcome. We take none of you for granted and we certainly do not want to undermine your choices, but, America, really? Reasonable people can disagree on many things, but surely, contrails is not one of them. Although, to be fair, those that disagree about contrails are likely disagreeable already and they are most surely not reasonable. The problem is, sadly, they are in positions of power. The US Secretary for Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy is at the centre of this. He has been spraying falsehoods about what are contrails and what is in them for some time.