{"id":1463,"date":"2023-03-05T23:51:14","date_gmt":"2023-03-05T21:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=1463"},"modified":"2023-03-05T23:51:14","modified_gmt":"2023-03-05T21:51:14","slug":"that-was-the-week-that-was-27-feb-03-march-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=1463","title":{"rendered":"That Was The Week That Was 27 Feb-03 March 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A week of fantastic thinking<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

F Scott Fitzgerald once said that the test of a first-rate intelligence was the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time.  On this analysis, we must take our hat off to our pilot friends, who mix that ability with an honours-level ability to disguise this fact.  On Monday<\/strong> the pilots came out demanding that we finally, finally, get a single European sky.  It is not clear how many skies the pilots think we now have in Europe, but, to be fair, they were after the Single European Sky.  Capitals matter \u2013 particularly in this case, because it is the capitals of each of the European states that refuse to make progress.  Out steamed pilots from the A4E members and straight to video<\/a>, demanding shorter routes, lower emissions and all those good things.   Presumably, what they do not want is increased technology and better productivity.  Single pilot operations perhaps?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not done with thinking in complex contradictory manners, a sub-set of the A4E, the Astro-turf lobby group (sic) Europeans Four Fair competition wanted to badger the European Council\u2019s Transport Committee, a meeting of the transport ministers of the European union member states, under the chairmanship of the presidency, currently Sweden.  They went straight to Twitter<\/a>.  They demanded three things: no reform of ownership and control rules; that old chestnut \u2018fair competition\u2019 \u2013 which given they were talking to the Swedes might just have been a reference to Vikings, it is hard to know; and this puzzler, sustainable subsidies.  No, we don\u2019t understand that either.  State aid that never stops?   That every airline should be treated like Alitalia, with a never-ending stream of state money? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If that was not confusing enough, on Tuesday<\/strong> a new report<\/a> by Airport Dimensions \u2013 which sounds like it is perhaps a quantity surveying firm, but in fact is a consultancy that can produce words of dizzying complexity.  Their new report talks of \u2018tribes\u2019 that use airports.  Hitherto, one might have thought that a reference to a rugby team end of year trip, but apparently you are one of the Premiers; the Affluent; the Streamliners; the Wayfinders; or the Explorers.  So now you know.  As walking through an airport is increasingly like walking through an IKEA there is another group \u2013 the shortcut seekers.  What do we need to do to get their status recognised?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday<\/strong> saw still more fantastic thinking, this time from the US military, which has given $65 million to a start-up company to show how you can make fuel<\/a> from the carbon dioxide already in the air.  What could possibly go wrong with that?  The plan is to produce shipping container-sized units that make fuel from air, gossamer air.  All going well, this will allow the US Air Force to take its fuel supply with it as it deploys forward.  And, you ask, what powers this miracle?  All you have to do is plug it in to the power socket in the wall.  Or, have a very long extension cord.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, you may ask, what happens when you put magical thinking along with parallel thinking and mystery language?  You get a mash-up of an airline talking sustainability and Sesame Street.  No, I am not making this up.  Oscar \u2013 the one that lives in a garbage can \u2013 is now United\u2019s Chief Trash Officer.  Please take a moment to admire my self-constraint at this point as I let a very, very obvious joke jog past.  Thursday\u2019s <\/strong>announcement<\/a> of Oscar\u2019s new job will take some beating.  We can only hope that United feature \u2018I heart SAF\u2019 pillows in their on-board shopping trolleys.  Every home should have at least one.  It is true that SAFs and where we are going to find them in sufficient quantity is a complex topic that could take many years to solve, so getting the next generation onto the case when they are at the Sesame Street age is one way to do it.  To have been a fly on the wall when the marketing team pitched this to senior management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The week of magical language came to a climax on Friday<\/strong> when all of the things we have been discussing came to a single point of clarity, or a clarifying point of singularity.  Take your pick.  We have previously talked about the duelling ATM conferences, one, Airspace World, in Geneva this week, and the other, Airspace Integration Congress in Madrid in September.  But determined to go hard, rather than go home, our friends in Madrid have come up with an idea that literally cannot be topped.  Madrid\u2019s world\u2019s largest ATM exposition (not to be confused with Geneva\u2019s world\u2019s largest ATM exposition) has a new event as part of the show \u2013 the World Space Summit, to be called WOSS<\/a>, obviously.  Except, except, what is space?  It is that stuff above the summit.  Get to whatever summit you strive for and the space will still be above you.  There is not summit to space. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am sure that I speak for everyone when I note that I really, really hope that there is a roadmap to the Space Summit, or perhaps that the Summit will produce a roadmap.  It would be fantastic to even think about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A week of fantastic thinking F Scott Fitzgerald once said that the test of a first-rate intelligence was the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time.  On this analysis, we must take our hat off to our pilot friends, who mix that ability with an honours-level ability to disguise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15,11,49,51,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-traffic-management","category-airlines","category-airports","category-eu","category-european-commission","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463","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=1463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1464,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions\/1464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}