Aviation Intelligence Reporter August 2021
Aviation and Sustainability: Fit for 2155
Come Out With Your Hands Up. What Will it Take to Force Reform?
A New Space Race, But Not As We Know It, Jim
Slots, Again: Slowly Swimming Towards the Light?
The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Alpha and Delta
Our Nomination for the 2021 Maverick Award
The Aviation Advocacy Annual Crossword 013
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Aviation and Sustainability: Fit for 2155
The European Commission announced its plans for decarbonising transport on Bastille Day. As with Deng Xiaoping’s view of the French Revolution, it might be too early to tell what the impact of the package might be, but the early signs are that industry is worried. The package, known as Fit for 55 – no, not compliance by 2055, but the challenge of reducing emissions by 55% – by 2030. Yes, this 2030, eight and half years away. Expect a lot of deliberate confusion around a 2055 (or even 2155) target.
Come Out With Your Hands Up. What Will it Take to Force Reform?
The response from the industry to the Fit for 55 package raises a fundamental question: what will it take to get the airlines to accept the need to change? Why do they cling so desperately to the old, rather than attempt to embrace the new? Any attempt by regulators and others to create a movement for change is met with copy-and-paste press
releases and cliché. If laziness were a scent, it would come in an IATA shaped bottle.
A New Space Race, But Not As We Know It, Jim
The first-ever person to get to outer space was a Communist and his journey was paid for by Russia’s taxpayers. The next few were American and their journeys too, including onto the Moon, were paid for by their taxpayers. Recently, we have had the questionable sight of two further trips towards space, also paid for by taxpayers, albeit without our consent. Both Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos went all that way, without actually making it to outer space, and thus not becoming astronauts, but still could not find their way to the tax office to do the only honourable thing. To his miniscule credit, at least Branson did not rub the noses of his employees in it, as Bezos did.
Slots, Again: Slowly Swimming Towards the Light?
There are now two permanent slots in the aviation industry’s calendar. Twice a year, each and every season since the start of the pandemic, the legacy airlines have argued that time must standstill, so that they can retain their status as incumbents. This half-year, the Commission did not get the memo. Instead of rolling over and falling for insipid arguments about how old, usually debt-riddled and non-profitable airlines, and only old, usually debt-riddled and non-profitable airlines know what is best for the industry, the Commission has made a very modest suggestion to change the situation in light of the slow return to more normal activity. It did not automatically give the legacy carriers their
self-assumed legacy priority access to the best markets, with helpful sideline of keeping competitors out. Instead, it has started to think about the arguments.
The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Alpha and Delta
We have previously noted that Shakespeare wrote The Tempest in a plague year. In the meantime, we watch what can only be described as a Shakespearian struggle between the various variants of Covid-19 as they vie for our attention and for a life in which they mutate together. It is hard, in such circumstances, not to wonder if Shakespeare also
had plague year thinking in his writing of The Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.
Our Nomination for the 2021 Maverick Award
Once again, CANSO and the Air Traffic Control Association intend marking their return to face-to-face conferencing in Madrid, in late October, by awarding the ‘Maverick Awards’ to players they think are doing nothing more or less than what would be expected in an ATM system determined to reform only in a way that will not upset any other players. That, you will agree, is a very maverick use of the word ‘maverick’. Normally it means to do things out of the ordinary, and out of step with the norm. Remarkably, our nomination did not go forward to the judges.