That Was The Week That Was 12-16 April 2021
COVID Litigation is good for you
Monday may have been a holiday for most of us, but the team at CANSO had important data to transmit and a feast day was not going to stop them from doing so. Maybe there had been too much chocolate taken in, but with what can only be called a sugar rush of excitement, CANSO’s traffic data for March was released. ‘Remarkable recovery in traffic in the United States in March drove North America to exceed January 2020 volumes for the first time…’ since, err, January 2020 presumably. For the viewers at home, March is spring, with breaks and increased activity. No January traffic has ever exceeded March traffic since the Wright boys, but we should be pleased that there is some growth in the US. It is all domestic and driven by the rates of vaccination.
The US is not the world’s best vaccinated country; Israel is, followed by the UAE and Chile. Israel and the UAE have no domestic traffic and currently strictly enforced borders. Chile, on the other hand, opened its borders and disaster has now struck. The borders are back up. Still, that fact did nothing to stop the unrelenting cries for a vaccination passport/certificate around the industry once the Paschal break was duly observed.
Because how else can we get back to normal? The World ATM Congress, normally held in March, in Madrid, sent their most recent sign-up-now message on Tuesday. The congress has been moved to October – like the IATA AGM – but ‘they cannot wait to see us’ in Madrid. The cancellation of the 2020 event saw widespread losses and non-refundable cancellation fees, but they were different days. Still, linking between the before times and the new world will be the return of the famous Maverick Awards. Is there a heart that does not quicken at those? How very maverick to pretend that nothing has changed.
But closer to home and nearer to the money, the European Court of Justice was ruling on two Ryanair claims against the cascade of state aid decisions that we are being bombarded with at the moment on Wednesday. The decisions were remarkable. Remarkable for their patriotism and economic illiteracy. These two decisions will reverberate, or at least call for some of the most remarkable direction changes down the road, as their stupidity is understood. In the Swedish case, for example, it says that it is appropriate to give specific aid to the largest carrier in the country. That you will appreciate is a very patriotic stance to take.
They could not possibly challenge the state aid because that would make it hard for the dominant carrier (Finnair in one case, in err, Finland, and SAS in Sweden) to be more dominant. That is a good thing, apparently – that dominant dominate further. Really? Who thinks that? Oh, wait, no. That is not dominance, it is patriotism. That sounds much nicer. We must all pull together and help the home team. That is almost exactly what it says.
But, reverberation alert. What happens when this rule is applied to, say, Italy? Ryanair is the largest carrier in Italy. And quite a few others.
Thursday gave us a heads up on what might happen then, and that long-time wet blanket for competition and real change, the Astroturf organisation Europeans Four Fair Competition (but not for fair edukation) finally released their press release opposing the sending of the long disputed Air Services Agreement between the EU and Qatar. You will remember that the European carriers pressed and pressed for these agreements, until they realised that there was a risk of competition from carriers on the other end of the route. That was not the sort of fair they had had in mind. Suddenly, they were a terrible idea, albeit one which moments ago the carriers had pushed to finalise. So, they struck on a wheeze – these agreements involved airlines owned by the state. Whoops. That line has been taken out and gently put down too. The new arguments to stop the agreement are Covid, because, well, Covid really, and sustainability. European flights to Qatar will not pollute but Qatari flights to Europe will. The next line of argument will be that Qatar Airways uses purple paint on its logo, and that is reserved for Roman Senators and Bishops, so, so, blasphemy!
But, to be fair, the best bit of this week, the week that was, was reserved for Friday with the release of a podcast involving the General Counsel of Alitalia, talking of his experiences responding to the crisis. This is a podcast that deserves going viral, and no doubt in DG MOVE and DG COMP it will be top ten listening within moments. It was not that he forecasts that Alitalia will continue working from home once the pandemic ends, reducing the need for most of the staff seats on most flights, or that the new Alitalia will bring many skills to the new airline in terms of dealing with governments, but that having been in economic distress was great training for surviving Covid. All those years had them in tip-top shape for the challenge. They are world champions at state aid and that is a skill they have honed over many years. Alitalia looks forward to many more years of dominance. In great news for all the other airlines of Europe, we now know that being propped up by state aid is the way to go!