Aviation Intelligence Reporter December 2020-January 2021
Testing Times
Being Flexible About the Unending One-Off Slot Waiver: Truth or Dare?
Pantomime Season Comes to the Green Level Playing Field
A DG’s Book of Modern Manners
Corona Did Not Do For Norwegian, the System Did
Pax Europa Aviatia – In a Roundabout, Roundtable Way The Tragedy of King Lear (Jet)
Aviation’s Non CO2 Contribution: How Long Until We Know All the Facts?
Modern Monetary Theory and Aviation
The Waste Land
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The Bumper Christmas Edition
Testing Times
Before 9/11, we thought it inconceivable that someone would want to destroy an aircraft whilst sitting on it. We looked for bombs in the hold, not strapped to passengers. After 9/11, the airline industry had to learn a new language: security-speak. We became friends with the security community. Now a new, unknowable threat is at hand. There is a new language to learn, full of vocabulary like ‘quarantine’ and ‘PCR tests’. But instead of signing up for language courses in health-speak, taught by our new best friends in public health, we risk an unhealthy relationship with the health community. Airlines are increasingly frustrated at the caution shown by health officials. So, like the sisters, they are doing it for themselves. Unlike the sisters, they are going at it like a bull at a gate.
Being Flexible About the Unending One-Off Slot Waiver: Truth or Dare?
One of the features of the aviation industry is that we rarely tell the truth. The ‘Freedoms’ of the air are actually restrictions. The one thing that we do not share in a code-share is the code. International aviation is completely national. Aviation is the business of freedom, but is regulated to within an inch of its existence. Slots have long been susceptible to this flaw – the Worldwide Slot Guidelines, for example, is not worldwide at all. They do not apply in much of the world and they are only guidelines until such time as you chose to deviate from them where they do, at which point the full wrath of the incumbent industry will fall on your head like Thor’s hammer.
Pantomime Season Comes to the Green Level Playing Field
Good lobbyists know that you have to find a hook to hang your particular ask on, or risk being ignored. You do not need super powers to know that at the moment you need to paint your point green if you want any traction at all. So, the challenge is on to find ways to bring your point back to the green agenda. It gets much harder when that link is, to say the least, somewhat tenuous. But that is why our friends at Europeans four Fair Competition (no, not a spelling mistake, their website is numerate, not literate) are paid the big bucks. They can make stopping any sort of real competition a Green Issue. E4FC’s new position paper is a masterclass in the art of getting your point across whilst pandering to the perceived issue du nos jours. In this year of cancelled theatre and socially distanced bubbles of entertainment, it is good to know that at least pantomime lives on. Those nasty Gulf carriers (boo, hiss…) are going to make Europe fail to meet its Green New Deal Targets. Fortunately, the good guys (cheer!) are here to be sure that every boy and girl can get home in time for Christmas (hooray!). As befits the pantomime tradition, there is even some cross-dressing and confusion about identities.
A DG’s Book of Modern Manners
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a trade association in possession of a steady income is in a very fine place. What is less universally acknowledged is what happens when a trade association loses that income through no fault of its own. For that, gentle reader, is the situation IATA finds itself facing. Austen is no help putting together a book of manners for that. Dickens discusses the situation, at length, but generally, there is little hope for those that fall onto hard times. What is a trade association to do? Only a fraction of IATA’s revenue comes from its members’ dues. Most comes from the processing of agency bookings at BSPs and airlines and other stakeholders settling their accounts via the clearing house; and from sales of training and accreditation. These are not growth areas. The cargo agent settlement system will wipe its face this year, but for the rest, faces remain unwashed, waif-like, as IATA dips into its accumulated surpluses.
Corona Did Not Do For Norwegian, the System Did
The aviation industry has remarkably thin skin… er, margins. That is true particularly for legacy carriers, who laud competition whilst taking full advantage of their incumbency: ranging from tax breaks in the US; subsidies and partial government ownership in the Europe; full overnment ownership in the Middle East and China and priority access to slots and so on. Few, if any, of these advantages flow to new carriers. They have to do what they can to establish a toe-hold. They are reduced to relying on things like lower prices, better service and flexible labour practices to gain market share. You might think big talking beacons of capitalism like airline CEOs and pilots would endorse this. Yet, in 2013, when Norwegian Air international filed with the US DOT for authorisation to conduct foreign scheduled air services, it led to angry protests, administrative proceedings, hundreds of pages of comments and the intervention of the courts. What should have been a rubber stamp – after all, the US championed Open Skies – turned into a five year-long battle to uphold… the EU-US Open Skies Agreement.
Pax Europa Aviatia – In a Roundabout, Roundtable Way
The Pax Romana extended across most of what we now call Europe. It was a mix of military might, the commonality of purpose, and agreements with warring tribes, all held together by a need for the denarii of the Roman treasury. A lot like European aviation today. Nothing unites warring tribes like a common enemy and the promise of future funding, so Brussels, in the role of Rome in this analogy, launched work on the terms of a common agreement for those in the European Common Aviation Area. That is no small task. Nevertheless, the Commission boldly brought the various tribes together to create a Recovery Report. With no respect for preserving the purity of the analogy they chose to call it a report of a roundtable, implying knights and chivalry, but the outcome was Roman in its intent, although to be fair, its implementation will call for all those virtues knights swore oaths to, such as honour and truth and loyalty. Because, whether the various warring tribes, or trade associations as they prefer to be known, realise it or not, the Roundtable Recovery Report includes an array of undertakings to which they might be held and will be expected to honour – particularly by DG MOVE.
The Tragedy of King Lear (Jet)
Shakespeare wrote his greatest tragedy, King Lear, during the plague of 1605. What would it look like if he had written it during the plague year of 2020?
Lear, the aging king of Aviation, decides to step down from the throne and divide his kingdom evenly among his three daughters. First, however, he puts his daughters through a test, asking each to tell him how much she loves him. Legacy and State aid, Lear’s older daughters, give their father flattering answers. But Reformia, Lear’s youngest and favourite daughter, remains silent, saying that she has no words to describe how much she loves her father. Lear flies into a rage and disowns Reformia. King European Market, who has courted Reformia, says that he still wants to marry her even without her share of Aviation, and she accompanies him to Brussels without her father’s blessing.
Aviation’s Non CO2 Contribution: How Long Until We Know All the Facts?
By Bill Hemmings – Independent Aviation and Climate Consultant
Twenty-one prominent climate scientists concluded last September that aviation’s contribution to global warming is three times that attributed to CO2 alone. The Commission’s long-delayed report to Parliament last week – all 3 pages of it – buried this finding on p36 of the accompanying EASA study which endorsed an underlying new Global Warming Potential metric. So the European Parliament has been left to address the obvious questions: how to incorporate CO2 equivalents in emission inventories; the potential impact on 2030/50 targets; and, crucially, where to now for the Green Deal? Perpetuating the 3-page downplaying, no follow-up plan or additional funding was provided. EASA bravely spoke about political will. How right they are to highlight it.
Modern Monetary Theory and Aviation
As the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel starts to shine brighter, treasuries around the world are turning their attention to the day after the end of this crisis. Think of it as cosmology for accountants. The question they are pondering is ‘how are we going to pay for all the emergency aid?’ There are two paths for these future-looking beancounters to choose from: austerity or Modern Monetary Theory.
Merry Christmas
and a high flying, healthy
new year from all of
us at Aviation Advocacy