Aviation Intelligence Reporter – May 2019
Zero Carbon Growth, or Zero Growth?
The Wise Persons Group Report: Keeping Calm and Carrying On
ATM in Central Europe: Just Don’t Mention the Price War
Aviation Safety Regulation: Between the Idea and the Reality
Now Arriving at the Airport of the Future
Airport Charges Redux, Again. This Time with Feeling
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Zero Carbon Growth, or Zero Growth?
Ryanair’s CEO, Michael O’Leary, was asked recently who he saw as his biggest threat. He was unequivocal. ‘The sofa,’ he said. ‘We have to make sure people get up and fly.’ That is starting to look a little harder than it once did. Since she first made a mark getting up off her sofa and sitting instead on the steps of the Swedish parliament building, Greta Thunberg has been on quite a journey. She inspired the school children protests and is now rallying widespread disruptive action around Europe and the rest of the world. Her first steps, after those parliamentary steps, included a few mis-steps, including flying on a private jet to address the self-appointed masters of the universe at Davos, but now she makes sure that everyone knows she travels by train. She recently went on a round trip to and from Stockholm via Strasburg, Rome and London. This is a nightmare beyond O’Leary’s ken – up off the sofa, but not down to the airport.
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The Wise Persons Group Report: Keeping Calm and Carrying On
As we have previously noted, changing the ATM system is not easy, because it never stops to let the changes be made. So in a battle between revolution and evolution the wise course of action is probably evolution. That is certainly what the Wise Persons Group, which was set up to advise DG MOVE on how to take forward the reform of European ATM, concluded. There is a cynical view, of course. Given the personnel of the group, which included most of the players currently involved in trying to deliver the reform European ATM, they could conclude little else if they wanted to look into the mirror each morning. Of course we are on track! Keep calm and carry on carrying on.
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ATM in Central Europe: Just Don’t Mention the Price War
You know that sinking feeling you get when you organise something but it backfires, spectacularly? Backfiring beyond any sort of ‘unintended consequences’ level of backfire? Well, spare a thought for IATA, which organised an Aviation Day in Bucharest in mid-April. All the auguries were looking good. The Commission agreed to lend its name to the event too, and the Romanian CAA and Department of Transport were on-hand to dispense official Presidency of the Council gravitas and commemorative presidency ties and cuff links. So far; so good.
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Aviation Safety Regulation: Between the Idea and the Reality
TS Eliot would suggest that between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, lies the Shadow. He might well have been talking about aviation safety. The aviation industry expands and contracts in the ebb and flow of necessity and risk. In such an unforgiving industry the risk is obvious. The necessity is driven by more complex factors. Cost and the ability to keep expanding through the current growth surge the industry is experiencing are two such double-sided factors. Air travel is the safest form of travel. In 2017 there were zero air disasters. The obverse, of course, is when the ebb veers too far toward risk, and tragedy happens. The end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019 were marked by what are now well-documented back-to-back B737 Max disasters. Were the tragedies avoidable? What pushed the ebb to the brink of risk? To transpose the Eliot formulation into aviation, the relationship between the regulator and the regulated is the Shadow.
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Now Arriving at the Airport of the Future
It is always fun when a conference books a futurist. You know you are going to get half an hour of looking first at where we have been, and then pure speculation about what the future might look like. And you will get great powerpoint. The more general the topic the futurist is asked to opine on, the better it gets. Where it gets tricky is to ask one to tell you something specific. Like what might the airport of the future look like? That was the challenge put before Amy Zalman, of Prescient, a future-looking consultancy, at the recent ACI World AGM, held in Hong Kong.
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Airport and ANSP Charges Redux, Again. This Time with Feeling
Henrik Hololei, the DG of DG MOVE, is on manoeuvres about slot reform. His speech in Madrid, which we discussed last month, was reinforced when he spoke to the IATA Aviation Day conference in Bucharest in late April. Expect slots to be front and centre for some time to come. But this is the Commission, so slot reform will not happen in a vacuum. Europe is politics as Newtonian physics. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. To reform one aspect of the industry will need to offset by some countervailing change elsewhere. One obvious candidate is the Airport Charges Directive. ANSP charges are also in play at the moment.