Aviation Intelligence Reporter April 2022
De-Platforming the Airline Coordination Platform
Slot Reform? Airport Charges? It is All About Capacity
Evidence-Based Studies Are Great, Unless the Evidence Gets it Wrong
Light-Handed Airport Regulation has a Day in Court
In a Regulated Market, Who Funds Resilience?
The A4E CEO Summit: Everything Old is New Again
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De-Platforming the Airline Coordination Platform
The problem with civil wars is that it is hard to keep up with who is fighting whom. Mea culpa, we were wrong to speculate that the Aviation Alliance was simply a rebranding of the Airline Coordination Platform. But, perhaps we were not the only ones to make that erroneous logical leap. The Aviation Alliance is not a rebrand of the ACP. We know that because the ACP has rebranded itself. Forget forever the Airline Coordination Platform. The ACP has de-platformed itself. From now on, the ACP is the European Network Airlines Association. Now, it is a trade association, not a platform.
Slot Reform? Airport Charges? It is All About Capacity
Does it strike you as strange that after two years of pandemic and crisis, we continue to have slot-constrained airports? Traffic was through the floor – zero, in many cases – but still the airports are apparently so full that we cannot allow any competitors to enter the market. Never let anyone tell you that airports are ‘natural monopolies’. They are unnatural monopolies. They are monopoly by government fiat. And the airlines are determined to keep it that way.
Evidence-Based Studies Are Great, Unless the Evidence Gets it Wrong
Parliaments around the world are magnets for cliches. All those people talking, scheming, and forming factions, dressed in a little brief authority. There are always deals to be done, compromises to be made and voters to woo. It is inevitable that in an effort to cut through, cliches are used. There has to be some way to make sense of what is going on that those outside the bubble can appreciate.
Light-Handed Airport Regulation has a Day in Court
To Australia, where fans of non-intervention and light-handed airport regulation like to crow about how the system has been upheld several times and no airline has been brave enough to challenge the system, despite years of complaining. Something had to happen to bring this to a head, and Qantas decided that it would roll the dice. It started to refuse to pay the charges being levied on them at Perth Airport. Perth is required, under the legislation, to continue to serve Qantas (and other airlines) so the usual contractual solution in a situation like this was not available. Eventually, meaning several years after the payments were withheld (albeit some were Covid affected) Perth Airport snapped, taking Qantas to the Western Australian Supreme Court, demanding payment.
In a Regulated Market, Who Funds Resilience?
One of the post-Covid battles we are yet to fight is who pays for the losses airports and ANSPs suffered during the pandemic. The parties are currently digging trenches on both sides of the argument. For the airlines, the argument is that it is unfair for them to have to pay, in retrospect, for services they were unable to use. They are unable to charge their customers for flights they might have taken, but did not, and no other normal commercial entity would be able to charge for services not supplied either.
The A4E CEO Summit: Everything Old is New Again
The last time the Airlines Four Europe met in person, in early March 2020, when we knew little about Covid-19, we bravely faced the future and predicted, epidemiological experts that we are, that it would be over by July. July 2020 that is. Then, everything fell off a cliff. Last year the A4E Summit was a virtual affair. Is there anything more ironic, and tragic, than an airline association holding a virtual event? This year, there was a determined spirit of celebration in the air when finally, the great and the good were able to again meet in person, in Brussels, late in March. It was connectivity in action.