{"id":1130,"date":"2021-04-05T21:20:49","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T19:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=1130"},"modified":"2021-04-05T21:20:49","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T19:20:49","slug":"that-was-the-week-that-was-29-march-02-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=1130","title":{"rendered":"That Was The Week That Was 29 March-02 April"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What has caused the metaphor blockage?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The good ship Evergreen Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal for more than a week.  Trade stood still.  The world watched aghast as a tiny front-end loader tried to shift a ship six stories high and, as we quickly realised, wider than the canal itself.  It was a gift<\/a> to the meme writers.  Even finally getting the ship free was the cause of more comedy<\/a>.  Comedy, sure; memes, ok.  Such is the measure of our times.  But from the aviation corner, there has not been one metaphor come forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That seems like a terrible waste.  If ever there was a moment ripe for metaphor, it was surely this.  Why did none appear?  True it is that one of the rules in aviation is that we do not tempt fate.  You will never hear Airbus gloat (in public) about a crisis at Boeing, or vice versa.  We do not boast about safety.  That is fair-minded and honourable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But metaphors are surely different.  They are not gloating, they are not fate tempting.  They are merely realising that something can be used to give us a different angle on our own situation…  What could be better than this?  The second busiest sea artery in the world blocked?  Goods from Asia not getting to Europe?  The world divided into two.  Our struggle against this disruption a two-tonne digger and a couple of tug boats… <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is the Ever Given the route out of our industry\u2019s Covid nightmare?  We should have been cheering for the current, for the tides; against the digger.  The longer shipping ground to a halt (or is that run aground to a halt?) the more air freight looked like a better option.  The more people realised that trade and transport was precarious, the more we had the answers.  The Ever Given was our reverse Eyjafjallajokull moment.  This time, only aviation had the technology to make the world better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where was Slasher Walsh \u2013 who during the Eyjafjallajokull crisis was flying an aircraft to show that BA was not afraid?  Now, from his seat at IATA he could have been marshalling a reverse Berlin airlift, bringing IKEA flatpacks and other vital supplies to the stranded souls of Europe.  The Suez Airlift \u2013 all the post-war metaphors rolled into one.  No gloating, no tempting of fate, just some square-jawed airmen and airwomen, in their flying kit, armed only with a thousand yard stare and a grim determination to do their part to save the West.  Plucky engineers keeping the fleet going.  Brave ground handlers rushing in to off-load and then re-load the cargo into the bellies of awaiting aircraft.  The theme from the Dam Busters<\/a> swelling as each aircraft takes off.  Faces of grateful home decorators beaming as deliveries of their flatpacks are made: \u2018Thanks Aviation; Thanks IATA!\u2019 they would smile into the camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we really want to take this meta \u2013 and who doesn\u2019t? \u2013 we can turn it Cold War.  Russia seizes on this moment to try to further open up the Arctic route for shipping, with offers of ice-breaking ships.  For the US, determined not to give a millimetre they know this is their next Bay of Pigs moment.  Ships emit a lot of black carbon \u2013 so do aircraft \u2013 but demanding re-engineering fuel and engines to avoid that is costly.  But black carbon on snow and ice hastens melting, further opening up the Arctic route.  President Biden, sensing his JFK moment, pushes the button on the nuclear option and demands that Something Be Done about climate change and bunker fuels.  He threatens to pull out of CORSIA \u2013 indeed ICAO itself.     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, we let all that go; smiled at the memes and hoped that we could get delivery of a new desk…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What has caused the metaphor blockage? The good ship Evergreen Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal for more than a week.  Trade stood still.  The world watched aghast as a tiny front-end loader tried to shift a ship six stories high and, as we quickly realised, wider than the canal itself.  It was a gift […]<\/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-1130","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\/1130","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=1130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1131,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions\/1131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}