Aviation Intelligence Reporter – November 2017
We Demand Everything Now: An Afternoon with Europe’s Airlines
Reforming ATM One Airport at a Time: TANS and the Balance of Power
Airports: Connectivity Machines, or Connectivity Destroyers?
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: IATA Does Some Scenario Planning
Ticketing: One Way or Another, You Pay the Full Fare
Sustainable Hubris Goals: ATAG Overachieves
The Pilots’ Business Model is Under Threat
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We Demand Everything Now: An Afternoon with Europe’s Airlines
The Airlines for Europe, or to use its preferred codename, the A4E, is an endlessly fascinating source of mystery. Just when one is inclined to dismiss it as merely another under-resourced airline trade association, it surges into view as a fan of 1960s counter culture. The iconic rock musical, Hair, throbs through its veins. Chill out man. Cool. Not for the A4E the pinned down and sharply parted hairstyles of yesterday. No, let the hair flow man; like a river man. They hide it well, but at the A4E, they keep a very close eye of celestial movements, and not just those of their members’ CEOs. Remarkably, there are even bigger forces at play.
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Reforming ATM One Airport at a Time: TANS and the Balance of Power
The ATM Policy Institute held its first workshop in Dublin in mid-October. Formal Proceedings will be issued and will be available on its website soon. The reform of various parts of ATM was discussed, including those topics currently in the sights of the think-tank: terminal control and training. As we discussed in September, the first function-specific paper from the Institute is on terminal air navigation services.
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Airports: Connectivity Machines, or Connectivity Destroyers?
The bruising dialogue of the deaf between the airports and the airlines continued in October. Depending on whom you ask, airports either generate connectivity or are the only thing standing between you and connectivity. At its base, this turns on money. The airports claim that airports generate connectivity – something of an oxymoronic argument given that airline connectivity is unlikely to be generated from any other location – and the airlines argue that if they had free access to airports the first flight to depart would be to the sun-lit uplands.
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The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: IATA Does Some Scenario Planning
Those with an elephantine memory may recall that former IATA DG Giovanni Bisignani once tried to project the aviation industry’s future to 2050. No-one less than Professor Michael Porter was called in, at some expense, to prepare the report. Fortunately for Bisignani and IATA more generally, despite being heralded with much fan-fare, it sunk without trace. It was collateral damage from the shambolic 2011 IATA AGM held in Singapore that humiliated Bisignani and his crack executive team, at what was supposed to be his glorious swansong. That was perhaps the only good thing that came out of the meeting from IATA’s perspective, because the report concluded that the airline business model has no future. We covered both the AGM and the study at the time.
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Ticketing: One Way or Another, You Pay the Full Fare
October was a monster month for the aviation industry economic analysis geek. We have been presented with studies, reports and infographics on an array of topics, from airport competition to taxation. Even the travel agency community is getting into the swing of study tabling. It has released a study on the true cost of selling tickets directly.
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Sustainable Hubris Goals: ATAG Overachieves
The Sustainable Development Goals have been an obsession for the United Nations and its agencies for the last two years. They dominate its non-crisis driven work. Agreed in 2015, the SDGs are the follow-on to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. There are 17 SDGs, setting targets for 2030 in areas as wide-ranging as environmental protection to child and maternal health and education. Each of the UN’s agencies has been asked to calibrate its work in terms of how it can meet these goals.
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The Pilots’ Business Model is Under Threat
Europe’s eponymous pilots’ union, the European Cockpit Association, is on a rampage against what it euphemistically calls ‘asymmetric employment’ and ‘new business models’. These are the employment practices used by new, non-legacy airlines, such as – whisper it – the low cost carriers. The LCCs have a successful business model on the back of not being like the legacy carriers – a point either lost on the pilots or so hugely detested that pilots will stop at nothing to bring back the good old days. The arrival of drones has doubled down their paranoia and doubled up their hysteria. Even they can see that soon, asymmetric employment will be the good old days.
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