Aviation Intelligence Reporter – June 2019
How Many Belts and Roads Must ICAO Walk Down?
IATA’s NDC: A Missed Connection?
U-Space – Its European for UTM. If Only We Knew What it Meant…
Green Policies; Green Parties; Greenwash: Mixed Signals
Green Biz-Av: An Oxymoron?
ICAO: Setting the Standards on Cyber Security?
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How Many Belts and Roads Must ICAO Walk Down?
Employees of UN organisations, as part of their recruitment, are required to sign a pledge that they will never favour their home country in their work. It is a sensible requirement to put on its staff. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how the UN and its agencies could work if each employee never stopped wearing their nationality on their sleeve. At least it used to be hard to imagine. Sadly, now, we do not have to imagine it; we can watch it in action. It is not edifying.
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IATA’s NDC: A Missed Connection?
Timing matters for connecting passengers, but just as importantly, it matters for IATA’s control of the travel agent that sells that connection. European competition law has always balanced benefits and detriments. The Reagan administration shifted US antitrust scrutiny from an examination of market structure to consumer welfare around the time aviation was deregulated. If prices stayed low, mergers were blessed and vertical restraints ignored. The IATA Passenger Agency Programme capitalised and set about writing strict rules about the sale, remittance and reporting of agent activities. This assumption of control reached its zenith in the late 1990s, when the airlines, through the PAP, eliminated commissions, breaking the principal-agent relationship. It was a poorly thought through, knee-jerk, cost cutting move. And it was just before the internet flattened the world and distribution via data hungry websites became possible. Awful timing. Travel agents, no longer representing airlines, became the agents of passengers. Airlines lost control of the data, but continued to regulate the procedures.
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U-Space – Its European for UTM. If Only We Knew What it Meant…
Drones threaten to upset the industry in many ways: airport operations; ATM assumptions; the delivery business. Regulators too are scrambling to keep pace with this new, digital interloper. Since the European Transport Commissioner, Violetta Bulc, announced the U-Space concept in Warsaw three years ago, regulators have been pressed by stakeholders to come up with definitive definitions, con-ops and procedures as a basis to develop mature UAS, and now, the emerging UAM markets.
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Green Policies; Green Parties; Greenwash: Mixed Signals
Every keen kindergarten finger-painter can tell you that you make green by mixing blue and yellow. When grown-ups talk about green issues, they tend to mix their messages, not their paints, but their hands can get just as messy. In the last month we have seen an array of messages on the environment, from all sides of the discussion. The only consistent bit about the various messages is that they are mixed.
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Green Biz-Av: An Oxymoron?
EBACE 2019, Europe’s flagship convention for the business aviation industry, was self-consciously its greenest yet. The show was prefaced by a well-publicised get-together of manufacturers, operators and regulators at Farnborough to promote sustainable alternative jet fuels (SAJF). Two days later, EBACES’s keynotes were bio-fuels and engine electrification. Walking the floor, few exhibitors had missed the opportunity to wave at least a token flag of sustainability. Green-coloured business cards abounded. The charter brokers’ hub was encircled by Amazonian prints. You get the point.
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ICAO: Setting the Standards on Cyber Security?
You would be excused for thinking that there are currently only two topics suitable for discussion. If you are silent about emissions, you must mention cyber security.
The problem with talking about cyber security is that it is very depressing. The best expert advice seems to be a breach is inevitable and that the best defence you can have is to always assume the worst; be transparent when it happens; have a recovery plan in place; and, trust your friends, but only your real friends. ICAO organised a conference on cyber security last year. In April, the Secretary General of ICAO, Dr Fang Lui, speaking at the ACI World AGM in Hong Kong talked about how ICAO was setting the standards for cyber security. She sees ICAO’s role as being to approach the challenges of a digitised air transport sector by establishing ‘a comprehensive sectorial architecture which will provide a secure core foundation for sustainable air transport digital interoperability.’
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