Aviation Intelligence Reporter June 2021
The Unbearable Lightness of Being an Industry-Wide Recovery
The Unbearable Lightness of Being an Airport
The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Belarusian ANSP
The Unbearable Lightness of Being an Independent Ground Handler
The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Tourism Recovery
The Unbearable Lightness of Being IATA
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being an Industry-Wide Recovery
Very little is predictable about the aviation industry right now, but one thing is certain: the
recovery in international air travel, when it comes, will not be smooth. According to an
April 2021 study from McKinsey, ‘When demand for air travel returns, it will likely
outpace supply initially. We see a glut of latent demand of people eager to travel. It will
take time for airlines to restore capacity, and bottlenecks such as delays in bringing
aircraft back to service and crew retraining could lead to a supply-demand gap, resulting
in higher short-term prices.’ You can see why McKinsey charge such high fees.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being an Airport
The longer the crisis goes on, the starker the situation for airports becomes. The huge
amounts of money given to airlines to ensure their survival – a questionable goal – have
simply not trickled down to the airports. Yet, airlines are replaceable. There are already
new airlines on the blocks waiting to start. There would be staff, aircraft and even slots
ready if we had handled the crisis well, instead of panicked and short-sightedly. If you
think about it, what we did, in an objective sense, and to use the technical term, was
totally bonkers. Of course it is important that people are able to feed their family. That is
what the furlough schemes were for. And of course we have to protect vital national
infrastructure. Are airlines infrastructure? If so, why not regulate them as utilities?
Instead, not for the first time, we have privatised the profits and socialised the losses.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Belarusian ANSP
Airlines are all about marketing. Your airline’s flight attendants have whiter teeth than
the other airline’s flight attendant. Airports are all about location, location, location.
ANSPs on the other hand, are like the Red Cross. They do prison visits, they will
distribute food parcels and blankets and they will do so anonymously. Until the end of
May, they were the most trusted part of the industry. But as Lady Grey says in Henry
VI, ‘trust him not that hath once broken faith’. The question is what impact the behaviour
of the Belarusian ANSP, Belaeronavigatsia, will have on all the others. Will it be enough
to say that this was a one off? That every other ANSP in the world is trustworthy?
Belarus is exceptional, but not that exceptional. It is ruled by a strongman, the ANSP is
part of the government, with strong military connections. So is Russia’s and Brazil’s,
China’s and Turkey’s. The Economist adds Rwanda to the list as well.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being an Independent Ground Handler
The law of unintended consequences is a strange and powerful force. The global
independent ground handling sector is about to be squeezed as never before by
collapsing margins and ridiculously demanding customers. But, the end result could be
a surprise: the rise of a powerful new aviation stakeholder group.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Tourism Recovery
It is not only in aviation that the regulators face complex paradoxes and a future that
needs new paradigms (see above). As we approach our second Pandemic Summer, the
mindset of travellers has shifted greatly since this time last year. This is due in large part
to mass vaccination and authorities’ appreciation of the willingness of vaccinated
travellers to bolster the throttled tourism ecosystem. Early in May, Commission
President Ursula von der Leyen recommended that vaccinated non-resident travellers be
granted travel rights to Europe this summer. All parts of the travel and tourism industry
clamours to satisfy that pent-up demand. But yet, the pandemic highlighted both our
inherent desire to move and the inadequacies of the current model for tourism’s
sustainability. No airline wanted access to Indian tourists closed, for example.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being IATA
Chapter One – In which I get a new client, who asks me to look into ‘the TravelPass
thing’ and other mysteries emerge
It was 3am; I was having a drink. I think it was Wednesday. Maybe Thursday.
Pandemic time does that to you. Particularly if you work in my field. John-Paul Sartre,
existential detective, at your service. It had been a long week and a half, or maybe a
short half month. In any event, I needed that drink. Water, in case you are wondering. I
needed to dry out, which you do by drinking water. See what I mean?