Aviation Intelligence Reporter
February 2023
Slaves to International Comity
We Can Only Get to 2050 by Going Through 2025
Slaves to the Existing Business Model
Eurocontrol Gets Out the Crystal Ball
Airport Competition: UK Regulators Say Yes
Much Binding in the Cargo Marsh
Déjà Vu, Again, for the Not Very Single, Single European Sky
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Slaves to International Comity
What if William Wilberforce had decided there was need for international comity before campaigning to abolish slavery? At best, it would have been abolished about half a century later, after the American civil war – assuming that without the UK and others acting, that war happened at all. For the UK to strike out alone meant that its traders would suffer. The UK’s colonial agricultural industries – largely cotton and sugar – argued, loudly, they would suffer because labour costs would increase. The domestic situation of the middle and upper class would be ever so slightly inconvenienced – a common political hurdle. The abolition of slavery has familiar resonances for aviation.
We Can Only Get to 2050 by Going Through 2025*
*Professor Geoffrey Lipman – SUNX Alliance
The IPCC stated clearly last year that to achieve ‘net zero emissions by 2050’ we must reach a 43% reduction in emissions by 2030. And, those emissions must peak by 2025. Even then we will almost certainly be destined to go above 1.5 degrees by 2050 – there is too much post-industrial greenhouse gas out there already. It takes about 100 years for that to go away. Furthermore, remember that 1.5 degrees is simply a tolerable level for human life, but it will still deliver cataclysmic extreme weather.
Slaves to the Existing Business Model
The argument against moving faster, moving at all, on decarbonisation is that the business model of aviation simply cannot withstand the sort of changes necessary to make it happen. Under this theory, governments must fund the changes. In the US pandemic bailouts and the recent unfortunately named Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, risks a metaphysical bombing campaign on Europe’s plan for mandates (and significantly less funding) to compel action. Or to put it in the simple terms, as used at a Euractiv sponsored briefing in Brussels last month, convened by Rome Airport, Brussels is proposing a carrot and stick approach; Washington a carrot and carrot approach. It was clear that the Europeans want carrot today and carrot tomorrow. No sticks.
Eurocontrol Gets Out the Crystal Ball
It is that time of the year again. The last few years may have been unprecedently bad, and frankly, unforecastably bad too, but to their enormous credit, there are always brave souls prepared to look into the future and make predictions. Predictions, especially about the future, being particularly hard, as Yogi Berra once noted, you have to admire the courage called for to do that. And, in general, the run of these has been that 2023 will be the year of positive outlooks and measurable progress returning to (and sometimes surpassing) 2019 numbers. The most recent thrower of a hat into the ring is Eurocontrol’s Aviation Intelligence Unit. You can get your hands on its Performance 2022 – Outlook 2023 report from their website.
Airport Competition: UK Regulators Say Yes
It is good to have a hobby. For European aviation it is to debate the existence, or not, of airport competition. For the airlines, airport competition is an oxymoron. As far as they are concerned, we need oppressive, squeeze-till-blood-comes-out-of-ear regulation of ‘monopoly service providers’ such as airports. Oh, and ANSPs too. Airports (and ANSPs) are natural monopolies, according to this theory, with only one aim, to charge like the Light Brigade. Funnily enough, the airports try to resist this analysis. From time to time, the airline and airport trade associations produce papers and studies to prove their side of the point. ACI Europe is now foreshadowing their next report is imminent.
Much Binding in the Cargo Marsh
Set up after the war, run on a shoestring and ultimately broadcast across Europe by Radio Luxemburg, Much Binding in the March was a radio programme that had a devoted following despite being constantly overshadowed by the Goon Show and other stars of the BBC comedy firmament. It started as a satire on the bureaucracy the army required of staff working on the base in which it was set, and then followed their and its progress to becoming a country club after the war. A lot like air cargo, really. Devoted band of followers, overshadowed, coping with red tape as a way of life. Always the poor cousin, always the first to be off-loaded if the winds get up, always needing to go via Luxemburg. Cargo is generally an afterthought for airlines and even for the rest of the aviation ecosystem. Sometimes, you wonder if they rather like it that way.
Déjà Vu, Again, for the Not Very Single, Single European Sky
Here we go again, for the lost counth time, trying to get the European States to agree to a single European sky, the Single European Sky. The advantages of addressing the airspace of Europe, not multiple airspaces, are well known and well-rehearsed. The airlines, the Commission, the trade associations have listed them again and again. You can track the issues of greatest concern at any time by tracking the ‘silver bullet’ argument that has been wheeled out to try to get SES agreed.