{"id":1120,"date":"2021-03-21T21:33:47","date_gmt":"2021-03-21T19:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=1120"},"modified":"2021-03-21T21:33:47","modified_gmt":"2021-03-21T19:33:47","slug":"that-was-the-week-that-was-15-19-march-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=1120","title":{"rendered":"That Was The Week That Was 15-19 March 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A period of great realignment<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We live, as China\u2019s Chairman Xi likes to point out, in a period of great realignment.  If you listen carefully, you can hear the passive aggression.  A period of great realignment…  Put Great Power posturing and international comity aside; imagine if the good Chairman actually worked in aviation?  Why did we not copyright that phrase and then charge for its use?  That would be a revenue stream we could all share.  As nobody in the aviation industry will deny, we live in a period of great realignment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Witness the meeting in the European Parliament on Monday<\/strong> between the Committee on Transport and the Committee on Security and Defence, to discuss the Single European Sky.  The Chair of the Security and Defence Committee noted that the Single European Sky held great promise.  Well, indeed…  But, she went on, Europe had yet to fully take advantage of it.  It is Europe\u2019s fault, you see.  But, this is a period of great realignment, so we need great coordination.  Is there a difference between coordination and realignment?  Ploughing strait on, the Chair of the Transport Committee noted that the big issue really was sustainability.  Hello?  This is the military Karima Delli was talking to: the people for whom \u2018after-burners\u2019 more accurately means \u2018before-burners\u2019.  Then they make some noise, so that any discussion on sustainability is drowned out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Step forward the man for whom the term \u2018great realignment\u2019 might have been coined; a man who might have been written as a character in an op\u00e9ra bouffe; a character who one of either of Gilbert or Sullivan would have rejected as a joke name: General Graziano.  How thankful we are that this period of great realignment is in his hands, in his hands, in his hand\/When international peace-keeping is to be done, to be done;\/the sustainability-aware and European coordination cognisant General cannot be outdone\/ Be outdone…  etc.  It writes itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of which, on Tuesday,<\/strong> that self-contained great realignment machine, the European Court of Justice was given the advice<\/a> of the Advocate General that a strike is outside the control of the airline and thus does not provoke an obligation under Reg 261 \u2013 the much dreaded customer compensation regulation.  That opinion is striking mostly for it is great realignment-y nature.  Previous decisions have been that strikes are within the airlines\u2019 control \u2013 yes, they can always roll over and accede to the pilots\u2019 request. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So all was in readiness for Wednesday<\/strong> when the European Commission unveiled its Great Digital Green Certificate proposal.  This was the great realignment we had been Hoping For.  Or Praying For in the case of the A4E.   If, and it is a big if, the Commission can deliver, this might at least deliver part of the European summer travel market to the European travel industry.  But, the amassed forces of European aviation (and IATA) warns<\/a>, this will also require coordinated and speedy vaccine roll-out, and a testing regime.  In the ultimate insult, or the first indication of a great realignment, the various European associations, un-anagramable as they are, decided to twist the knife: Europe has not done as well as the UK.  No space for passivity in that aggression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in that way of all great realignments, by Thursday<\/strong> attention had returned to the sustainability debate.  Well, it was always going to, wasn\u2019t it?  This time, it was a scathing, no-holds-barred report from Transport & Environment (the ampersand is important to its branding) that noted that CORSIA was not very effective<\/a>.  Well how about that?  What a shock!  In what was, without doubt, the least great realignment news of the week, of the year, of the decade, the environmentalists have rumbled to the fact that CORSIA is a chimera?  Perhaps, in retrospect, that is the great realignment of the week.  Hello?  Holier than thou, stupider than all of us…  A great realignment indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leading us, inevitably, to Friday<\/strong>, and sadly, a study in the great re-unalignment.  There is none so blind as those that cannot hear the word \u2018Ryanair\u2019 and not remember their own journey, their own small seating space and their own purchased sandwich \u2013 whilst forgetting that the flight went to and from their actual destination and at a fair price.  Those last bits are irrelevant, obviously, or taken as read, or part of the great realignment that we approve of.  The bit we do not approve of \u2013 have we mentioned that we do not approve of this? \u2013 is the \u2018social and decent employment in the aviation sector\u2019 question from the European Parliament Committee on Employment and Social Affairs.  Ryanair is like the villain in a 1930s movie, tying maidens to railway tracks whilst twirling the ends of their sinister moustaches.  Say the word; boo vociferously.   Irrelevant, of course, is that Ryanair has sacked fewer staff than any other airline.  That is a great realignment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A period of great realignment We live, as China\u2019s Chairman Xi likes to point out, in a period of great realignment.  If you listen carefully, you can hear the passive aggression.  A period of great realignment…  Put Great Power posturing and international comity aside; imagine if the good Chairman actually worked in aviation?  Why did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120","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=1120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1121,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions\/1121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}