That Was The Week That Was 26-30 October
A week when the industry avoided clichés, like the plague!
It is a source of constant fascination that somehow, the aviation industry has the ability to work together as well as it does, not in the big things, but in the little things. It is the attention to detail that is breath-taking. A few weeks ago, as an industry, it was decided that it was Metaphor Week. Who knew in advance? What secret processes are in play that make the entire industry fall into line? How is this vital information transmitted outside of all known communication channels? Is there a calendar setting out the calculus of which week is which?
In any event, mark your calendars because this week was cliché week! Getting us underway on Monday were the controllers – a safe bet for this sort of scene-setting work – with a press release from the ATCEUC – the Air Traffic Controllers European Unions’ Coordination – not a union per se, but the voice of the various controllers’ unions. They are opposed to the new European Commission proposals to change the package of regulations that make up the Single European Sky proposal – better known as SES2?. The controllers are not happy – mind you when it comes to reform, it is arguable that they are never happy unless they are unhappy – and they think that the error here is ‘haste makes waste’. A strong entry, right from the starting siren.
But, not to be outdone, the airports’ trade association, the ACI, took their turn at the [insert preferred sporting analogy here: crease; batter’s box; penalty spot; oche; free throw line…] on Tuesday with a very strong entry indeed. Talking about the financial plight of mainly smaller and regional airports as the Covid crisis continues, it noted that the airports have ‘cut costs to the bone’ and also to ‘build emergency war chests’. Not just any chests, mind.
Nonetheless, it was a shame, after such doom and gloom, that we learnt on Wednesday morning from ACI World in Montreal that airports were ‘celebrating the world’s best airports as the recovery continues’. This is a prize given to airports in various categories to celebrate the commitment of airports ‘to continuously improving the passenger experience’. We should be grateful they were not called ‘guests’. The winners were airports ‘prioritizing the travel experience’. They do this by ‘increasingly putting the passenger at the centre of everything they do’. For Amadeus, the award sponsor, passengers ‘inspire us to create solutions that enable airports to be more flexible, agile and adaptable’.
The bar was rising. Step forward our old friends the FABs! Thursday, in a change to regular scheduling, they did not extol the virtue of the very existence of the FABs – those underappreciated constructions the ANSPs of Europe hated until something requiring still more from them came along – but rather, in summarising a workshop on the interdependencies in ATM, put out a press release that stands as a beacon of clarity – remembering that the conference rejected papers that did not support the concept of the complexity of the interdependencies – noting ‘The current way of steering ATM performance has lost touch with reality. It is urgently needed to change the perspective from an intrinsic, production-oriented management to a stakeholder focused one – both from the perspective of European citizens, the economy, the airspace users and their passengers.’ No, not clear to me either…
To the extent that this wonderful sentence – yes alright, not a cliché, just incomprehensible – is trying to say anything it might just be that the obsession with looking at cost for ATM services, not value, is wrong, then it is a fair concept. But value includes costs. Delays are a big part of it too. Looking at you FABEC. Still, the release did note that we need ‘a single value-chain approach’, raising the intriguing question of how ATM would go if there were more than one value chain in play.
As you can see, by now the bar for cliché week was very high indeed. But that is never a problem for the Airlines for Europe, who note their class by misspelling their shortened form, as A4E. They released their submission to the consultation on a strategy for sustainable and smart mobility. To call this merely a medley of the A4E’s greatest hits is to do it a disservice. This is the circular economy at work. As Peter Allen may have sung, everything old is new again. Enjoy.