Aviation Intelligence Reporter – October 2019
Single Green European Skies
Economic Regulation: Why and For What Purpose?
Normalising Network-Centricity
Australian Airport Charges – Not for the Faint Hearted
A Giant Leap Forward for Dronekind
ICAO Goes on (Climate) Strike as IATA’s Climate Slogan gets its
Big Reveal Who Does Not Vote for Environmental Democracy?
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Single Green European Skies
No-one can doubt the Finnish Presidency’s commitment to sustainability. It is off-setting all the flights that holding the rotating presidency of the European Union inevitably entails, back and forth to Brussels, and the flights of other member states to attend meetings in Finland. To pay for that it is withholding the usual presidency memorabilia, such as ties and pens. Just as importantly, it is tackling the big and hard dossiers that will deliver emission reduction benefit. Top of that list is European ATM reform.
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Economic Regulation: Why and For What Purpose?
Everyone wants economic regulation, apparently. Europe’s airlines cannot have enough of it. More economic regulation is barely enough, as far as they are concerned. The Australian airlines want it to replace market forces at Australia’s airports (see below). The Wise Persons Group suggested the creation of an economic regulator for ATM service provision, notwithstanding the existence of the Performance Review Board, which sets, er… economic regulations for ATM. Wherever you look, the hills are alive with the calls for economic regulation. Why?
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Normalising Network-Centricity
We live in extraordinary times. This is not likely to come as a surprise but sometimes we need to stop and reflect on the point. And, just as the old Greek saw notes that a fish rots from the head, so do our times. Our leaders are extraordinary. Or not ordinary, at least; it is tempting to say one-offs, but more and more leaders like President Trump pop-up all the time. The worst bit about that is they have become to seem more and more normal, and we more and more normalise them. We start to accept that this is the new normal. Words like ‘sub-optimal’ fall out of the lexicon. That is what we are doing with the Single European Sky, too.
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Australian Airport Charges – Not for the Faint Hearted
Australians have a hard-earned reputation for being direct and to-the-point*. Start an argument in Australia and be warned, you have to be able to take the rough and tumble, as well as give it. Australia’s airlines have mounted an expensive campaign to protest airport charges, again. The costs include creating their own Astroturf organisation – Airlines for Australia and New Zealand, A4ANZ, proving that failing to be able to spell is contagious – and hosting the IATA AGM in Sydney last year. As low cost and low rent as that was – finger food in an old warehouse – it does not come cheap.
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A Giant Leap Forward for Dronekind
Since 2015, the Commission, the SESAR Joint Undertaking and EASA have been working to move European ATM into the next generation of aviation operations by incorporating drones into the traditional ATM platform. Progress is being made, but that is just as well, because it is becoming increasingly urgent that there be a solution. Not because the drone revolution is demanding it, but because the next level of autonomous flying, Unmanned Arial Mobility (UAM or flying taxis), is already here. Given that UAM involves humans, there is no time to lose.
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ICAO Goes on (Climate) Strike as IATA’s Climate Slogan gets its Big Reveal
To be fair to the aviation industry, and IATA in particular, it now realises that the climate debate is real. It also realises, finally, that it is not going away. The IATA-on-an-away-day coalition that is ATAG – IATA plus all its friends – has been thinking about this all year. Well, all of IATA’s friends went to a meeting of ATAG communications experts in January and told IATA that climate change was going to be The Big Issue this year. The fact is, as all independent observers could see, that the only-2%-business-of-freedom shtick was not working. IATA duly promised to come up with a new, better message. That was nine months ago. Late last month, at the start of the triennial ICAO Assembly, out came the big reveal: ‘Flying is not the enemy, carbon is the enemy’. It seems to owe something to the belligerent NRA approach: guns do not kill people…
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Who Does Not Vote for Environmental Democracy?
2019 is the year Climate Change became Climate Crisis. Europe is committed to carbon neutrality by 2050. Switzerland is the latest European country on the band wagon. It announced at the end of August its intention to meet its Paris Agreement commitments. Politicians feel they have to act, making discussions on the taxation of aviation almost inevitable. Add to that the pressure from the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit in New York, the ICAO triennial assembly in Montreal and COP 25 in December and you can see that ICAO really needs a good story to be able to at least look proactive.
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