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
Another big week for aviation – aren’t they all? – with news that the mainstream press somehow failed to notice. It must be so frustrating for the airline PR departments, pumping out ‘news’ at a furious rate, only to be largely ignored.
Monday saw the long-awaited release of the President Trump Infrastructure Plan, to make America great again, or something. It has the economic credibility of a bankrupt casino’s application for an overdraft extension, but it does talk about airports. Trump, you may recall, noted that US airports are ‘third world’ during the campaign. Airports all over the developing world should take umbrage. The solution proposed is best called ‘cash free’ but it is a start. Most importantly, and in line with Aviation Advocacy’s thinking, liberating the airports to develop as they see fit and without the dead hand of the incumbent airlines dominating them is a good thing. The plan gives much more funding authority to airports and removes limitations on the number of airports that can participate in a privatisation programme.
Nonetheless, it puts the IATA statement of outright opposition to privatisation into context. Game on.
The great game though, according to Sir Tim Clark of Emirates, is not going to be about physical infrastructure; it is going to be about data, and big data. Talking on Tuesday, he noted that he is making sure that Emirates is ready. He assumes a complete and total re-engineering of the airline, but he is afraid that others are not going to be ready. This raises an interesting question. Why is he making these concerns public? Given that he might have a commercial advantage in seeing this before others, he should not talk about it but just do it. Given the structure of aviation, tied as it is to a World War II regulatory structure, maybe he knows that he will need at least some other airlines to survive?
On cue, the SG of ICAO, Dr Fang Lui looked from the other end of the telescope and told e-retailers that aviation was a vital part of their business model. Ask not what you can learn from others… Does the word hubris spring to mind?
By Wednesday, ICAO’s customary hubris was fading into the background, trumped. Oman Airlines put out a press release noting that they were a fundamental part of Heathrow’s noise reduction. Well done them.
Suspecting that no-one would notice, given that it was the Chinese New Year, on Thursday the New York Times published an article talking about the UK train system. Who knew the New York Times was a Brexiteer? The problem, according to the NYT, is that Britain’s trains are owned by ‘foreigners’. Or ‘Europeans’, which would be the correct term for them at the moment. A bit like the British, in fact, at least until next year.
Or, maybe you could say that they are owned by decent railway operators. To the extent the faux outrage had a point it was that the privatisation of UK rail had allowed state-owned continental European railway operators into the fold. In response to a competitive tender. The view of the European legacy carriers to the intrusion of state-owned and thus state-aided companies doing things better can be predicted at 50 paces.
So that is a bad thing about Europe then, presumably. Unlike the case the Scottish whisky makers brought against a German whisky maker that wanted to call its product Glen Buchenbach. The Scots were outraged. It is to be hoped that this European Court of Justice case is finalised before Mrs May’s no ECJ red line cuts in.
But Friday was saving the best until last. Alitalia was proud to announce that it is the most punctual airline in the world. Third in Europe and sixth amongst ‘major international airlines’ is all it takes to bring this gong home, apparently. Hubris or hutzpah? You be the judge.
