Aviation Intelligence Reporter – July 2019
What is the Collective Noun for Directors General?
The IATA AGM: Airline Body and Seoul
The CANSO AGM: A Retiring Affair
The ACI-Europe AGM: A Gathering for the Birds
Aviation and Emissions: Taxing Times
A Politician’s Guide to Green Skies
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What is the Collective Noun for Directors General?
What, the ever thoughtful David McMillan pondered, is the collective noun for a gathering of directors general? McMillan was chairing a discussion between the big three DsG at the CANSO AGM. It was a rare gathering of IATA’s Alexandre de Juniac, ACI Global’s Angela Gittens and CANSO’s out-going DG, Jeff Poole. Once, Gittens, Poole and de Juniac’s predecessor, Tony Tyler, had sworn a best-friends-forever blood oath to each other to attend each other’s AGM. But even besties can fall out. That lasted about a year. Gittens and Poole can usually be spotted at the IATA AGM but imperiously, as the Chinese emperor Qianlong once said to George III, IATA has no use for ACI or CANSO’s ‘objects strange or ingenious’.
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The IATA AGM: Airline Body and Seoul
Early June, after some confusion over dates, the industry’s good folk and famous gathered in the South Korean capital for the IATA AGM. Hoping to keep the good folk and famous awake and enlightened, IATA once again enlisted CNN’s Richard Quest to badger CEOs with questions on the Boeing Max crisis, Greta Thunburg’s quest to shame flying and, artificial intelligence. Quest and artificial intelligence in a sentence manages to be simultaneously oxymoronic and tautological. Well prepped CEOs meant no faux pas from the stage. In the corridors of the vast COEX convention centre, however, the gravity of the Max crisis dominated talks. In the press conferences it was impossible to avoid emissions. The two topics highlight the existential dilemma of IATA’s role.
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The CANSO AGM: A Retiring Affair
The great and the good of the ATM world this year gathered in Geneva for the CANSO AGM in mid-June. It was something of a homecoming for CANSO, which held its first AGM there 22 years ago. CANSO was originally a Swiss entity. A homecoming, but also a farewell for Francis Schubert, skyguide’s general counsel and CANSO stalwart. Indeed, Schubert is counted as one of CANSO’s founding fathers. Jeff Poole also retired, but that was barely mentioned. Apart from a little bit.
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The ACI-Europe AGM: A Gathering for the Birds
Cyprus has been a crossroads since the 11th century BC. It has been occupied by the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Venetians, the British and the Turks. Through all that, the Cypriots have managed to keep their sense of humour. Which is why they love comic theatre. Fortunately, Cypriot tradition is rich in both comic theatre and theatres. The ACI-Europe AGM was held in Limassol in late June and the delegates were given a production of Aristophanes’ comedy The Birds in the Hellenic era Kourion amphitheatre. The theatre was built 200 years before the play was written and the ACI crowd got to be amazed anew by just how topical a play from 550BC can be. Two men, disgusted by the hypocrisy and venality of modern life, and the lies of politicians in particular, decide that they need to change course, to find a new honest world and to live as carefree as the birds. This place, this new city, would likely be in the clouds, untethered from earthly concern. It was to be called Cloud Cuckoo Land.
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Aviation and Emissions: Taxing Times
With much of the aviation world tied up in Le Bourget at the Paris Air Show and ANSPs clustered in Geneva for CANSO’s AGM, the Finance Ministry of the Netherlands invited their European colleagues to The Hague to discuss aviation taxes. It was not a discussion about whether or not to tax aviation; it was a discussion about how quickly it could start. Bizarrely, the meeting was convened in an amusement park – a mini Holland, with perfect scale replica of various bits of the Netherlands, including Schiphol Airport itself – but there was little the aviation industry would have found amusing.
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A Politician’s Guide to Green Skies
My Dear Minister,
Last month’s Aviation Intelligence Reporter carried several pieces showing the contradictory trends that civil aviation is exposed to. You really should subscribe.
On the one hand, there is the airlines’ unabated appetite for constant growth. Who does not want the business of freedom to grow? IATA recently reported faster passenger volume growth than last year. Europe topped the chart with an 8% year-on-year increase. Coupled to that were analyses of the capacity constraints that air traffic control and airports suffer from, and calls for either more runway space, or more efficient ATM, or both. Capacity constraint is the Nemesis of growth. The Reporter predicts that summer may prove one of discontent. Again. Millions of travellers face delays.
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