Aviation Intelligence Reporter November 2021
Aviation and Emissions: Fit for 2050?
ICAO Reform: Turkeys and Christmas
Better Late Than Never; AGM Season is Finally Here!
The European Union, Leading the Way on Covid (Certificates)
A Qatartasrophe or Qatargorically a Good Thing?
Illegal Charter and Emiliano Sala: The Ball is at Our Feet. We Need to Act
The Unbearable Lightness of Being IATA
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Aviation and Emissions: Fit for 2050?
Say what you like about the new IATA-led Net Zero 2050 promise, it supports recycling. The machines that in the good old days filled the back rooms of the IATA office in Geneva in which tariff coordination meetings took place with smoke have been brought back into service. Sure, IATA had to invest in mirrors, but the smoke machines were simply reconditioned and redeployed. The circular economy at work. To IATA’s credit and by facing down the Chinese carriers, IATA committed to aviation being net zero for CO2 by 2050. Chinese carriers, like Saudi Arabia, want 2060. Airlines most certainly are not going to be Fit for 55, but somehow, with no milestones or thresholds along the way, on 31 December 2050, the industry is going to be green. Even the gas that IATA is using to gaslight you, IATA assures us, will be from environmentally sound sources.
ICAO Reform: Turkeys and Christmas
By Jacques Mason, an independent aviation consultant
In the run-up to the ICAO Assembly in 2019, the ICAO Council held an emergency session in August, dragging representatives back from far-flung corners of the globe for a matter of crucial importance. What was the issue requiring such extreme action? It was to excoriate a whistleblower whose stories had been all over the Canadian news in the first part of the year. This is symptomatic of the problem with the Council. With Representatives resident in Montreal all year, but whose duties only take up 18 weeks per year (three weeks of Committees and three weeks of Council, three times a year), they inevitably spend far too much time focussing inwardly, concocting avoidable storms of their own making rather than addressing the needs and demands of civil aviation.
Better Late Than Never; AGM Season is Finally Here!
One swallow may not make a summer, but three aviation association annual general meetings in a month was the traditional harbinger of northern sun and vacations. This year, the airline associations’ AGMs were more like the birds flying south, looking to avoid the winter. Unlike the messaging at the meetings. That was focused on how to stop global warming, like birds counter-intuitively flying north in winter, to avoid the heat.
The European Union, Leading the Way on Covid (Certificates)
Maybe it was the thought of another lost summer on the Med, but nothing seems to motivate the European Union to action more than travel, unless it is going to restaurants. We now have a new poster child for the Union. The European Digital Covid Certificate is used – and mutually recognised – in 43 countries around the world, and according to a report released mid-October, it is soon to be adopted by 60 others. This is an international standard setting on steroids. The power of the summer holiday at work. Imagine if ICAO was in charge of this. No, you do not have to imagine that, you can merely sit back and watch the recent High Level Conference on Covid. If you have two weeks to spare. All the conference papers, if laid end-to-end, would still not reach a conclusion.
A Qatartasrophe or Qatargorically a Good Thing?
Who knew that one could have such a fun time punning with the name of a small, oil-rich state? Or should that be ‘UAE knew’ one could have such a fun time punning with the name of a small, oil-rich state? In any event, Qatar put in quite the shift in October. After years of discussion and actively hostile resistance from Lufthansa and Air France/KLM – nothing passive about this aggression – the Commission finally signed a new Air Services Agreement with Qatar. This was lauded by all the usual sources as a ‘landmark aviation agreement
Illegal Charter and Emiliano Sala: The Ball is at Our Feet. We Need to Act
By Robert Balthus, COO, European Business Aviation Association
Sometimes there are moments where you hate to say, ‘I told you so’ but the incident with the Argentinean footballer Emiliano Sala was one of those moments. For years, the EBAA has warned that some of the regulations were not fit for purpose and that existing regulations should be better enforced. Commercial business aviation is one of the safest modes of transport, and our industry is proud of the investment our members make. At the same time, a limited number of aircraft owners and operators do not see the value of investing in an Air Operators Certificate and offer flights to the unsuspecting passenger without the safeguards that the travelling public should expect.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being IATA
Chapter Five: I am summonsed
The assistant to the secretary of Slasher’s secretary’s PA rang me. ‘Come in,’ she said.
‘When?’ I asked.
‘If you were half as good as you say you are, you would already know.’ There is no answer to that, so I made my way to his offices. Wooww, not sure if this was an office or the existential concept of an office. Desks and chairs; but no workers. She showed me in with a roll of her eyes. Not sure what that meant. I was given, by way of welcome, another rendition of the exaggerated watch watching I had been afforded the last time. Only this time, it was a rearview, as Slasher was standing with his back to me, looking out the window. Staring out the window.