Aviation Intelligence Reporter April 2021
Manifesting Your Passport to Vaccination Certification
What if Elon Musk Controlled Aviation?
Minimum Fare; Maximum Outrage
The Short-Sighted Politics of Short-Lived Climate Forcers
Tourism: From Soul of the Party to Soul of the Economy
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Manifesting Your Passport to Vaccination Certification
As we have remarked before, there are at least two ways the world is addressing the pandemic. In Asia, the strategy is elimination. In Europe and the US it is to accept that the virus is endemic and learn to live with it. The difference between the two comes down to the size and permeability of your national border. But the two are mutually exclusive. There can be no seamless, quarantine-less movement between the endemic and eliminated states. Plus, when there are unvaccinated people in a country with high
incidences and less strict entry requirements, the opportunity for mutation grows. So in Europe and the US, it is a race between the vaccines and the variants, possibly forever.
What if Elon Musk Controlled Aviation?
The only thing more certain than that the entire aviation industry has lost its shareholder shine during the pandemic is that Tesla has not. That is ironic, given the role Nickola Tesla played in the development of aviation and that the modern Tesla, and its maverick owner Elon Musk, are interested in travel through airspace and in electric propulsion. You would think that the overlaps would result in more synchronisation. But no, for all
intents and purposes, Musk shuns the aviation industry. He is too busy beating his own path to solutions to problems that aviation, with a 75 year head start, cannot crack.
Minimum Fare; Maximum Outrage
Some ideas are so totally ridiculous, so completely bonkers, so illegal, that they gain traction. So bad you have to love them, bad. Most recently floated by Carsten Spohr, the CEO of Lufthansa, speaking at a Eurocontrol StraightTalk (full disclosure, Aviation Advocacy is involved) the concept of regulating a minimum fare on European sectors is now getting serious consideration. No, really. The Commission is quietly soliciting views before taking any action. The Commission did not solicit the view of the Aviation
Intelligence Reporter but, nevertheless, here is our view: Do Not Do Something So Totally Stupid. Ever. Or, at least, Never Again.
The Short-Sighted Politics of Short-Lived Climate Forcers
The UK Royal Aeronautical Society’s Greener by Design work on contrail mitigation is looking to enable ‘big hit’ contrail reduction trials in the Shanwick FIR as soon as COVID permits. It is claimed that these could cut more climate warming, overnight, than all the technological innovation currently on the drawing board. Couple them with efficient ATM and these changes will not increase fuel burn. Not a euro need be spent; but you are
hard pressed to find anyone in the industry talking about it.