Aviation Intelligence Reporter – December 2012 / January 2013


Megaphone Diplomacy in Action – The Panama Joint Declaration
Mishandling Ground Handling
The European ETS – Blind Man’s Bluff?
ATM Competition – A New Aviation Intelligence Review Series
Competition in the ATM Tower Market – A Good Idea Approaching?
IATA Also Asks How Amazon Would Sell Tickets – Sadly, Answer is in Code
ECJ – Hit Me ‘Cause It Feels So Good When You Stop
The Inaugural Aviation Intelligence Awards
Not My Fault – An Airline Manager’s Lament


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Megaphone Diplomacy in Action – The Panama Joint Declaration

The usual alphabet soup of acronyms, nothing less than the great and the good of the world aviation industry – ACI, ACI-LAC, ALTA, CANSO and IATA – gathered in Panama in October. They lent more than their initials to a meeting of ALTA – the Latin American and Caribbean trade association’s – Airline Leaders Forum. They channelled their anger and hopes for the future of air transport into a joint declaration urging governments to develop air transport infrastructure.

Mishandling Ground Handling

No-one continues to believe that airports are natural monopolies – they become unnatural monopolies when regulatory policy allows them to. If airports can compete, why is it so hard to get competition into the airports themselves? The most recent attempt, a modest effort from the European Commission to further open large airports’ ground-handling to competition, was roundly rejected by the European Parliament’s Transport and Tourism Committee in mid-October. This is an unwarranted rebuff to the Commission and a further victory for narrow Member State interests.

The European ETS – Blind Man’s Bluff?

Spanish bull fighters talk of defeat starting if you perderle un paso al toro; to give a step to the bull. It is all about coming forward all the time and never giving ground. Bull fighting never caught on in Denmark. It is still not clear if the decision by EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard was a backward step or a huge bluff to trap the bull in its own rhetoric.

ATM Competition – A New Aviation Intelligence Review Series

If 2012 is going to go down in history for anything positive in air transport, it will be that a new performance-driven, rather than cost-driven charging of ATM services was introduced into European aviation. That raises a huge number of questions, to do with competition in the ATM industry, charging and pricing. This month we are starting a new series of articles about competition in ATM. Graham Lake, the former DG of CANSO has written the following.

Competition in the ATM Tower Market – A Good Idea Approaching?

This month the US Office of the Inspector General (OIG) published an audit report (AV-2013-009) on ‘contract towers’ – out-sourced terminal service providers at smaller airports. Contract towers are a small but significant piece of the US ATM system and the report highlights lessons learnt in the US ATM system on costs in particular.

IATA Also Asks How Amazon Would Sell Tickets – Sadly, Answer is in Code

You may recall that we asked, in the April 2012 Aviation Intelligence Reporter, how Amazon would sell an airline ticket. Better late than never, IATA has now floated the same question. But, this being IATA, it is not as simple as that. The question is let out into the ether by soliciting an article from one of its industry partners and then published by IATA.

ECJ – Hit Me ‘Cause It Feels So Good When You Stop

Like the person who likes to be beaten because it feels so good when it stops, the airline industry can’t help offering up its glass chin to the heavy hitters at the European Court of Justice. In two November decisions, the ECJ once again came down on the side of passengers who regard airlines as insurers. Masochistically, at month’s end, the airlines once again are trying to get the ECJ to soften two previous judgments that made airlines liable forever-and-a-day in connection with flight delays.

The Inaugural Aviation Intelligence Awards

There has been a veritable outbreak of awards. As we reported in October, the two ATM conferences duelling for your attendance and attention in the Spring, the commercial ATC Global and new-comer and industry-sponsored World ATM Congress, each have an awards ceremony. The categories are particularly worthy.

Not My Fault – An Airline Manager’s Lament