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    The Aviation Advocacy Blog

    A cornucopia of news, opinion, views, facts and quirky bits that need to be talked about. Join our community and join in the conversation on all matters aviation. The blog includes our weekly round-up of the bits of European aviation you may otherwise have missed – That Was The Week That Was

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Archive for June, 2009

The IATA AGM – direct from the Great Hall of the People

June is annual general meeting month for air transport – and IATA set the ball rolling in Kuala Lumpur with a scream of pain that must have been heard in Singapore.  The situation is so dire that even Giovanni Bisignani’s speech writers seem to be running out of purple prose. The IATA AGM runs with all the cool spontaneity and sophistication of the Chinese Communist Party Annual General Assembly at the best of times, and this year, it seems that some of the Great Leader’s personal management theories came into their own.  You know the ones: wonderful slogans; activity not action; friends close, enemies closer; that sort of thing. And true to the workings of the Great Leader, we are to have a solution right out of 1950.  ‘Centralise in the hands of the party!’ the Chairman exhorted.  ‘Expel the running dog lackies of the imperial service providing profit making class!’  OK, I might have paraphrased that last bit. What was actually said, in nearly so many words, was ‘give us the regulatory freedom to dictate to everyone else what they need to do for us’.  No part of the service chain was left unscathed from the attack.  Travel agents have never had it so good, so they need to give some of their profits to the IATA carriers; airports – well airports, they need to be taught a lesson and regulated back into the ground; labour – flogging is too good for them; and as for ANSPs?  Well, clearly, the solution is more, more and then still more regulation.  What could airports and ANSPs know about their businesses that the airlines couldn’t dictate to them via their friendly regulators? See the pattern?  Everyone is out of step except us – so make them lose step.  Not for nothing are they called legacy carriers.  That is legacy, as in a gift of property. And true to the Mao style of management, it is important that the slogan says the exact opposite of the actuality.  For example: ‘We don’t want any subsidies or State Aid’ actually means ‘please ensure that no-one else touches these slots, because they are mine, even if I am not using them right now’. Another Mao-ian touch was in the environment area – an area, it is true, ripe for such flourishes.  IATA proudly announced a new target for carbon neutrality.  2020.  Like your hindsight.  Mark your calendars. Sounds great, until you remember that the aim of the Copenhagen meeting in December, and all the preparatory meetings leading up to Copenhagen, is to reduce emissions by 20% by 2020 around the world.  You don’t need a very strong calculator to work out that if everyone else is reducing by 20% and you are staying still then everyone else will need to reduce by more than 20% to reach the target. And the next 5 year plan for agricultural production will mean that we can feed all of the people in China, or something.  See what I mean?  It is quite addictive, once you get into the habit.

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