{"id":1048,"date":"2020-09-28T10:23:40","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T08:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=1048"},"modified":"2020-09-28T10:23:40","modified_gmt":"2020-09-28T08:23:40","slug":"that-was-the-week-that-was-21-25-september","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=1048","title":{"rendered":"That Was The Week That Was 21-25 September"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Fabulous Empires Strike Back \u2013 And Aviation Centres in Cyber Space<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Had Winston Churchill known of the Functional Airspace Blocks, or FABs, a Single European Sky 1 initiative that makes the reverse of nominative determinism A Thing, he might have said of them that they were modest initiatives, with much to be modest about.  So when on Monday<\/strong>, FABEC, the largest of the FABs \u2013 involving France, Germany, the Low Countries and Switzerland (think of it as the Holy Roman Empire) \u2013 put out a lengthy justification<\/a> for its existence you can be sure that Something Was Up.  You have to admire the poor PR hack given the task of making FABEC look fabulous, given that the modesty of its achievements and the delays its members single-handedly generated before Covid solved the capacity issue.  Still, never mind the quality feel the width, the release said, looking at the cooperation between its members and not at its members\u2019 actual performance, individually, or collectively.  That Europe does not have a Single European Sky is an insoluble mystery, apparently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Something That Was Up was revealed on Tuesday<\/strong>, when Commissioner V?lean announced a new push<\/a> to make SES2+ a reality.\u00a0 Call it SES2++\u00a0 There is a Brexit Bonus after all.\u00a0 Hooray!\u00a0 The UK leaving the EU means that Gibraltar is no longer an issue.\u00a0 The long-mooted unbundling of data services is to be pushed, EASA, Europe\u2019s safety agency will become the economic regulator, the Network Manager will play a more significant and central role and FABs downplayed.\u00a0 Regional cooperation will be steered by the Network Manager.\u00a0 The package got the to-be-expected cold shoulder from the ANSPs \u2013 sorry, the ANSPs welcomed the package and will study it, and by the way have we told you how magical FABs are?\u00a0 There is no need for further action, they implied, because, well, FABs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The airlines, in the meantime, were holding court<\/a> elsewhere in cyberland.\u00a0 Their new demand is that every passenger in the world be systematically tested before departure.\u00a0 Given the advances in technology, IATA\u2019s Alexandre de Juniac assured us, a test can be done for a mere $10.00.\u00a0 They expect to be able to administer 1,000,000 a day.\u00a0 By the end of the first month we could probably build a bridge across the Atlantic for that amount. \u00a0Who should pay for these tests?\u00a0 Governments, of course.\u00a0 Not content to absorb state aid equivalent to the GDP of a small country, taxpayers are now being asked to pay for private individual\u2019s travel.\u00a0 Of course, for the airlines it has to be a Someone Else that pays; airlines have spent a lifetime telling the world that to increase the cost of travel by one cent will see the entire industry collapse, so sensitive is travel to price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday<\/strong> got off to a rollicking comedic start, with the release of a statement<\/a> from the various staff associations \u2013 note the careful non-use of the word \u2018union\u2019 there \u2013 noting that it is \u2018time to rethink!\u2019 \u2013 note the careful use of the exclamation mark here \u2013 the post Covid recovery.\u00a0\u00a0 Covid has proved that aviation is critical infrastructure it starts.\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 The world seems to have survived better than we hoped without passenger travel.\u00a0 The internet is now critical infrastructure; Zoom is critical infrastructure.\u00a0 Obviously, we all want to travel to see friends and family; we all want the economic benefits of face-to-face meetings; we all want our jobs; but…\u00a0 What we need more than any of that is serious, focused, forward-looking reform of the industry.\u00a0 Or, we can all just pretend that everything is going to be just fine.\u00a0 Click your heels three times… \u00a0As the Florence School of Regulation noted in its thought piece<\/a>, infrastructure is converging and we need to know how to deal with that too.\u00a0 Spoiler alert, there will be disruption, one way or another.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having prepared the ground early in the week to remind the world that FABs actually still exist \u2013 a wake-up call that, by the fact it was made showed that it was necessary \u2013 FABCE came back to the well on Thursday<\/strong> to tell us about an actual initiative<\/a> they had signed.\u00a0 Yes, the ANSPs of Switzerland and Germany had agreed to develop cross-border free routing \u2013 starting at the end of next year, mind.\u00a0 No rush.\u00a0 FABEC has been in existence since SES 1 was signed in the year 2000, after all.\u00a0 We do not want to get too far forward.\u00a0 The German ANSP, DFS has been offering tit-bits of free routing for some time, but only at flight levels that allow free routing around the dark side of the moon, so we should be grateful for the initiative, but to call the timing \u2018curious\u2019 is to be disingenuous.\u00a0 Perhaps it is one for the \u2018protests too much\u2019 file?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any event, by Friday<\/strong>, campaigning to replace the Secretary General of ICAO had moved up a gear.\u00a0 Generally, in the pre-Covid world of yesteryear, this was done discretely, behind glasses of mid-priced champagne at diplomatic receptions.\u00a0 Social distancing puts an end to that, at least for now, so other weapons are being rolled into place.\u00a0 The McGill University\u2019s Air and Space Law Institute has long been the priesthood of the Church of ICAO, charged with the holy task of keeping the eternal flame alight, the one true truth evangelised and heretics put to the sword.\u00a0 So what finer group to be lobbied to support a particular candidate, by means of emails, rather than reception.\u00a0 All the graduates of the Institute were asked to support one of their own, a keeper of the faith.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, it was finally announced that this year, the already-delayed IATA AGM \u2013 that annual gathering of the great and the good of the aviation industry was to move on-line.\u00a0 Traditionally, IATA puts out a copy and replace press releases informing the world that for one week only, the centre of world aviation will be [insert city name here].\u00a0 This year, it is to be in cyberville.\u00a0 Maybe we called Metaphor Week too soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fabulous Empires Strike Back \u2013 And Aviation Centres in Cyber Space Had Winston Churchill known of the Functional Airspace Blocks, or FABs, a Single European Sky 1 initiative that makes the reverse of nominative determinism A Thing, he might have said of them that they were modest initiatives, with much to be modest about.  […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,29,13,15,11,40,21,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-navigation-service-providers","category-air-services-agreements","category-air-traffic-management","category-airlines","category-airports","category-covid-19","category-disaster-relief","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1049,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions\/1049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}