Aviation Intelligence Reporter – March 2018
US Carriers Win Massive Pyrrhic Victory
The Slot Lottery – Every Incumbent Wins a Prize
You Say Privatization; I Say Privatisation. IATA Calls the Whole Thing Off
Drone Wars: The Empire Strikes Back – ATM Colonises UTM
Satellite-Based Navigation – Back to the Future, by 2030, Perhaps
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US Carriers Win Massive Pyrrhic Victory
You may have noticed that the big US carriers have been somewhat upset by what they see as ‘unfair’ behaviour from airlines that do better than them. In their eyes, the path to world domination is blocked by these egregiously behaving airlines that fly to and from parts of the world that are not traditional legacy airline hubs. Locations that to locate, US airlines’ managements need both the name of the city and its country: Darussalam, Tanzania for example, or Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
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The Slot Lottery – Every Incumbent Wins a Prize
There have been two significant developments in relation to slots recently, the last in mid-February. As is so often the case, they did not get the attention they warranted.
First, in late November, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that the administrator of the bankrupt Monarch Airlines was entitled to sell Monarch’s Gatwick slots, overturning an earlier High Court ruling that the administrator had no right to sell what Monarch had forfeited. The administrator in bankruptcy argued that the slots were allocated appropriately at the time and thus were rightfully available for sale as part of the winding-up of the airline. The slot coordinator countered that the slot rules, Regulation 93/95, require the holder of a slot to have an AOC. Without an AOC, an airline’s slots must be returned to the pool. After the collapse, the coordinator contended, Monarch lost its AOC. That requirement is also contained in IATA’s Worldwide Slot Guidelines.
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You Say Privatization; I Say Privatisation. IATA Calls the Whole Thing Off
Churchill once described the US and the UK as two countries divided by a common language. Never has that been truer than in the case of the word ‘privatisation’. Adding to the confusion, currently in the US, the word is being used in two different contexts, and differently in each. First, there is the ‘privatization’ of the air traffic control part of the FAA. This is a privatisation in exactly the same way that aviation is maritime transport. Fortunately, the wordsmith du nous jour, President Trump, has entered the fray. Can linguistic certainty be far behind? He likes privatisation. Mind you, his definition of ‘privatisation’ roams unrestrained across what the rest of the world calls an array of creative funding options. In that context, corporatisation looks positively benign.
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Drone Wars: The Empire Strikes Back – ATM Colonises UTM
At the risk of a little bit of schadenfreude, the Aviation Intelligence Reporter predictions concerning drones and the speed at which they would become mainstream are coming true. However, what we did not predict was the never-mind-the-torpedoes insistence of ANSPs to take economically unsustainable business decisions to remain the only game in town when it comes to how drones are to be controlled. In retrospect, that is a huge mea culpa on our part. We mistakenly assumed sensible decision making.
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Satellite-Based Navigation – Back to the Future, by 2030, Perhaps
The air traffic management industry knows that it faces a capacity crunch. Actions are being taken to ease the pain, but traffic steadily grows. To date, the ATM system has coped. The ability of the system to continue to absorb that growth is increasingly unclear. Radar and UHF radio continues to dominate ATM processes. Bless. You have to admire such venerable technologies. They have stood the test of time. But it is folly to expect that improvements to the status quo can be further refined, ad infinitum.
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