Aviation Intelligence Reporter March 2023
Hydrogen – Equivocation is the Biggest Obstacle
Greenwashers Assemble!
Another Crank of the Slot Machine Handle
Google Flights Regroups
Uncooperative Balloons
Airline Consolidation: More TAP Dancing
Good Lobbying Moves in Mysterious Ways
Tourism: Come One, Come All; or Bring Your Money With You?
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Hydrogen – Equivocation is the Biggest Obstacle at this rate
2023 will go down in history as Aviation Hydrogen Year ’. In January, the largest aircraft in the world to be powered by a hydrogen-electric engine made its first flight, when a ZeroAvia 19-seat Dornier 228 testbed aircraft, retrofitted with a full-size prototype hydrogen-electric powertrain on its left wing took off from the company’s R&D facility at Cotswold Airport and flew for 10 minutes. The hydrogen electric engine
operated alongside an unwoke fossil fuelled Honeywell TPE 331 engine. The hydrogen-electric powertrain comprises two fuel cell stacks, with lithium-ion battery packs providing peak power support during take-off and adding additional redundancy for safe testing according to the accompanying company blurb. In this testbed configuration, hydrogen tanks, and fuel cell power generation systems were housed inside the cabin. In a commercial configuration, external storage would be used and the seats restored Good news on the seats. The external storage was not specified.
Greenwashers Assemble!
There are two types of science fiction: hard and soft. An early example of hard sci-fi is HG Wells’ From the Earth to the Moon. The conceit of space travel was based on actual scientific concepts. It felt real, grounded on a reader’s predisposed understanding. Soft sci-fi, in contrast, was perfected in Jules Verne’s The First Men in the Moon, where Dr. Cavor creates, cleverly, Cavorite, which counters the effects of gravity. A conceit that we know is not real, know could not be real, but accept, for the purposes of the narrative.
Another Crank of the Slot Machine Handle
Slots are back on the agenda. Did they ever leave the agenda? Do they ever leave the agenda? Even mid-Covid crisis, when there was no traffic, slots were on the agenda. In any event, the Commission is mid-consultation. The go-to consultants, the nominatively determined Steer are mid-discussion with selected industry stakeholders. The International Transport Forum, a branch of the OECD, has also been charged with studying the topic, at the behest of one of its members. Whether there is any overlap between the Steer stakeholders and the ITF is another matter. We can only hope. It would be interesting to know who selects the Steer stakeholders. Who steers Steer?
Google Flights Regroups
In 2011, Google purchased the then-up-and-coming airline reservation system ITA. Some, including us, predicted that it might be revolutionary. Google could list available flights in accordance with your search and then based on your search history and interests also suggest related activities. Those suggestions would drive its revenue, making the booking process free for the airlines. Then, and now, GDSs charge a small fortune for every booking that they make, so for airlines, the potential offer of free bookings, funded by the commissions from related product sales, looked interesting. Even airlines as GDS-adverse as Ryanair signed up. But somehow, it did not happen that way. Google Flights exists; it is possible to put your sectors into the search box and it will find flights and connections for you. But as for ticketing and other services, not so much. In the meantime, Google organised itself as Google Travel and is much more diverse than ticketing alone. Airlines continue to rely on GDS and, increasingly, their own websites, powered by Google for sales.
Uncooperative Balloons
According to their boosters, we need to continue to maintain and indeed expand our radar surveillance capacity to keep our skies safe from ‘uncooperative players’. But for the radar, we are told, usually by someone with their receipt book out ready to take another huge order for still more spectrum-heavy, energy-heavy, acronym-heavy, expensive pieces of kit, but for the radar, we would be exposed to who knows what sort of uncooperative threat. We fall for it every time. It is a killer argument from the sales team, a two-fer: safety and security. No ANSP CEO can resist being on the right side of that one-two argument. It seems that no one questions the role that radars play, and have played, since 1945. What is more, we accept this even though radar proved entirely hopeless against the recent spate of spy balloons.
Airline Consolidation: More TAP Dancing
The differences in European and US aviation are multiple, but one statistic is stark. In the US, 90% of the traffic is carried by four airlines. In Europe, less than 60% of the traffic is carried by a dozen airlines. Also rather stark is the relative financial performance of the airlines of Europe and the airlines of the USA. Good financial performance is more than just good profits, or at least it should be. Profitable airlines can invest in safety, in products, in equipment, and even in funding new sustainable ways to fly. It may be true that US airlines surged to profitability before the pandemic on the back of immiserating the passenger experience, and survived the pandemic by positioning themselves under the public funding spigot, but, frankly, that is no different to the situation in Europe. Nonetheless, the US carriers are now verging on investment grade – a most unusual sensation in aviation.
Good Lobbying Moves in Mysterious Ways
When the facts are your side, the old lawyers’ dictum goes, bang the facts. When the law is on your side, bang the law. When neither the facts nor the law is on your side, bang the table. That could be the motto of most lobbying we see in the aviation industry. Subtle is not a word you hear when it comes to the industry trying to influence outcomes. There might be a number of reasons for that but the most obvious one is the overarching sense of entitlement most players in the industry carry as a badge of honour. When things do not go according to their sure and certain view of the world, the world is wrong and needs to be told so. And the situation was corrected immediately.
Tourism: Come One, Come All; or Bring Your Money With You?
If, and you might be able to take this as a given, airfares are going up, the laws of economics – not as strict as the law of gravity, but pretty close – mean that the demand will fall. That will have an impact on the airlines, it will have an impact on emissions, eventually, but it will also have an impact on tourism. Globally, tourism is about 10% of total employment, so that matters. The surge in demand across the globe has meant that after two years of famine, it has been two years of feast for tourism operators, and now they are starting to think strategy.