That Was The Week That Was 13 – 17 April
Monday was a holiday in most of Europe, but usually one of those very busy travel days, as holiday makers came back from a long weekend. Not this year. The airports were as quiet as quiet. So were the skies. The airwaves, on the other hand were full of hints that the US was about to stop paying its dues to the World Health Organization. That sent shock waves through the pandemic-struck world but it must have been doubly distressing in Montreal. The US funding of ICAO is already in question. Add to that the notice from the White House that it intends appointing the current head of HR at the White House, Mr Sean Doocey as its Ambassador to ICAO. Then add in, for good measure, that normally, any such appointment would need Senate approval, but that is hard to get at the moment. Mr Trump is threatening all sorts of political games to get his nominees approved. High jinks in high politics…
For most, Tuesday was back to work (from home) day and all around the world you could hear the sound of the cash taps being turned to ‘full on’. Money started pouring onto the heads of airlines, and to a much lesser extent, on to the heads of airports and ANSPs. First out of the blocks was, go on, guess… Air France!, but that was last week’s news. Well, OK, that assumes that you ignore Alitalia, for whom this is a home game, and they had secured their re-re-re-nationalisaton almost before the first death from Covid-19 had hit Italy. No, this week, the week that was, was different. Sweden stumped up 5 billion krona for airlines with Swedish AOCs. Then Belgium came to the party by exempting airport payments. But all that was by way of warm up. The big one for the day was the approval of a scheme that Eurocontrol put in place to allow airlines to defer their en-route and overflight charges. The ANSPs approved of that, certainly in contrast to the situation earlier when airlines were simply refusing to pay those charges. Most airlines, on getting their usual Eurocontrol invoice has said merely two words. One of those words was ‘get’…
What was more contentious was the unilateral decision by airlines to not offer cash refunds. Unable to resist temptation by Tuesday, this was rapidly becoming ‘a dogfight’. The oldies are the goodies.
The big news on Wednesday was that the all new, totally revised Commission work plan was leaked. The great news for airlines just keeps coming. The work plan notes that one of the things the Commission can do is reduce airport charges, in the context of their work reviewing the airport charges directive. Well, not work really, that would be to mis-describe it now. It is a foregone conclusion. That will save DG MOVE a lot of work. Why bother with process at all?
The equally big news on the other side of the Atlantic was that the airlines and the Treasury had agreed a bail out of a mere USD25 billion, much of it as a gift, some with what can only be called ‘condition-lite’ requirements and some requiring a tiny little bit of equity – in the form of warrants.
As ever with loans with what looks like light conditions, the devil is in the detail, so by about oh, dawn on Thursday the condition on the US airlines that they continue to operate all the services they used to operate started to bite. Really? Even if the aircraft is empty? Madness. Still, in solidarity, Europe’s Transport Commissioner, Mrs Adina-Ioana V?lean came right out and said it – in these times of financial crisis, we should not try to work too hard to meet green targets. Indeed, forget them! You could not make this up.
But on Friday, Austria begged to differ. Its aid for the German-owned Austrian Airlines was tied to environmental obligations, the Ministry said.
More shockingly, Friday also saw the release of the draft for comment of Eurocontrol’s annual ANSP Performance Review Committee’s report. The full data is not yet available, but a quick read seems to suggest that even in the glory days of 2019, when we had set sail for growth etc, the ANSPs reduced their capacity. It seems, again, from the report, with no data, that we should be looking at the unintended consequences file for this one. The Commission’s performance scheme penalises ANSPs for delays, but not enough. It is cheaper to not produce the capacity and take the fine. The real cost of the delay is absorbed by the airlines and, of course, you and me, the passengers. Still, to be fair to the ANSPs, reducing capacity might have been prescient after all…