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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That Was The Week That Was: 29 January – 2 February 2018
New York, they claim, is so famous they named it twice. What might be fairly momentous announcements in aviation, on the other hand, appear to be so momentous that you have to make them twice to hope to get any traction. We reported last week on the fact that a number of African states have agreed to try to establish a pan-African aviation area. We seemed to be the only people that noticed the announcement. So, to their credit, they tried again. On Monday, they resent out the announcement. This time, the FT picked it up and the rest is history…
Presumably there will be lots of work for consultants that can sell their expertise, gleaned over many years of working in Europe on developing the European common aviation area. For all the words written about that remarkable achievement, there is no seminal textbook about it. That might be because in fact, how to do something is not always clear, and the reality is that mistakes were made. It is the mistakes that are the interesting things – what we really need is not a book about how to do it, but one about how NOT to do it.
Tuesday on the other hand, saw an aviation story of a very different ilk. An aircraft full of plumbers had to turn back because the toilet was blocked. Apparently one needed to address the issue from outside the aircraft, but this was the only call-out fee these plumbers turned down.
More importantly, Tuesday also saw the conclusion of the negotiations between Qatar, in the red corner and the US, in the blue corner. This was supposed to be the culmination of three years of lobbying and campaigning by the US carriers against the nasty Gulf carriers, who were demonised for what was seen as ‘unfair competition’. You will no doubt appreciate that the unfairness was in terms of outcome, not opportunity. Delta in particular seemed to be channelling their inner Trump years before Trump came along. Sad!
And after all that work, and money, and angst? The results were best described as underwhelming. It is hard to believe that the Aviation Intelligence Reporter will not delve more deeply into this.
Which lead us to Wednesday, and the leaking of the EU position for the negotiations with the UK over Brexit. Imagine our surprise when there in amongst 50 or so very dull slides was the initial string LPF. Yes! LPF – level playing field. At the Aviation Intelligence Reporter we tried to make that a thing two years ago! We were just too early for our own good. Their own good is what the EC’s negotiators have in mind too when considering their LPF. They are doing this for the good of the UK side. Funny how after the hype of the Olympics, ‘Team GB’ seems to have been gently parked.
By Thursday, the alcohol industry, or the head of Pernot Richard in any event, was warning that taxes on alcohol merely punish abusers, not the responsible. How would that scan if we tried translating that over to the aviation environment? We are taxing abusers, not the responsible. As an industry, we do not encourage frequent abusers… etc.
Finally, on Friday the UK CAA opened a consultation on airline seating allocations for group seating purchases. This, in the wake of accusations that airlines are separating travellers, requiring groups to pay extra fees in order to sit together. Spring breaks and British stag-dos will never be the same.
