Aviation Intelligence Reporter March 2026
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Threads: Risks of Entanglement, or Unravelment?
Ominously, several threads are converging in European aviation. First, the Commission has embraced ‘Competitiveness’ as its lodestar. Competitiveness is the new black. We are to be guided by two former Italian PMs – Señores Draghi and Letta – to a place where Europe’s market gets the respect it deserves. Last month, the Council convened a Summit – so serious it was held in a castle – to forge ahead with making Europe competitive. The target, President Von der Leyen noted, is to make Europe a truly single market. To be able to drive ‘without the handbrake on’. In other words, to make the rest of Europe like aviation. A moment for a victory lap? No! The handbrake is on. Things are rotten in the state of European aviation. The legacy airlines took the opportunity to go to the Antwerp European Industry Summit preceding the Summit to point out the un-levelness of the playing field. We are losing competitiveness. Again. Or is it still?
SOCK! POW! SAF-BAM! Time for Serious Analysis
Efforts to push for a SAF Border Adjustment Mechanism are gathering steam. And, in the great tradition of the label ‘legacy’, not only do the EU legacy carriers want a mechanism that imposes costs on selected non-European carriers, they also want any money paid as an adjustment to flow back to cover their own ReFuelEU compliance costs. But wait, there is more. What about a reduction in the RefuelEU mandate obligations? Yes indeed. Cannot say fairer than that. Do you need some snake oil? That is the level we are at now. The proposal is, in effect, to reduce the mandate-induced cost exposure of Europe’s carriers by diluting the SAF mandate obligations which apply to fuel providers and make non-EU airlines pay for that reduced exposure.
Cargo: the World Turned Up-Side Down
Anyone that has worked for an airline will tell you that cargo is different. We are being shown again just how different it is. The cargo world is going through a phase, it is fair to say. It is also fair to say that most of that phase can be sheeted home to President Trump. The current global upheavals, the tariffs, the attack on trade and the current uncertainty did not help, but as we reported at the time, even in his first term Trump was determined to put his thumbs on the scales.
Still Processing: The Sisyphean Upgrades of NATS’ Systems
By Jacques Mason – Independent Aviation Analyst
We regularly hear that UK NATS is the world’s leading ANSP, tackling the most complex airspace imaginable, innovating on every front. Yet in a recently released UK CAA ‘CAPEX Independent Reviewer Report’ by Egis, NATS were scored ‘B-‘. Most engineers would be mortified by a grade like this – unless it was for English, which, in fact, it was. The review wasn’t about the systems; it looked at how clearly NATS communicated to stakeholders about the systems. The aim was to assess performance from the perspective of what users of its services expect from meaningful engagement on its CAPEX plans’. Or, ‘how well does NATS communicate its CAPEX failures to users’. The CAA wants users to lodge complaints, allowing it to flex its regulatory superpower of ‘commissioning a report’.
Why Tourism Should Not Be (Border) Adjusted
Global travel and tourism is not merely a cyclical service sector. Tourism has always intertwined macroeconomic indicators and human behaviour. Arguably, it is a sector without a growth limit. Statista projects that, over the 2024–2029 period, travel and tourism is expected to be the fastest-growing major economic sector worldwide, outpacing traditional growth drivers like manufacturing, retail, and financial services on a compound annual growth rate basis. This projection positions the sector at the forefront of global value-added expansion, signalling robust demand for mobility and experiential consumption even amid the turmoil of our time. A good sector to be competitive in.
Aviation’s Eternal Fight: Bean Counters versus Dreamers
The Economist recently spent some time looking at the change coming over the aviation industry. Specifically, it wondered why Ryanair is such a remarkable success story. Its conclusion, in a nutshell, was that the airline is operated by a team that is relentlessly focused on its financial success, knowing that it is based on ruthless operational efficiency. It is a victory for the bean counters over the dreamers. The dreamers have, for most of aviation’s history, defined the arc of progress. Not for much longer. Full disclosure, Aviation Advocacy was quoted in the article.