{"id":769,"date":"2018-02-02T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-02T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=769"},"modified":"2019-07-23T11:43:56","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T09:43:56","slug":"that-was-the-week-that-was-29-january-2-february-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=769","title":{"rendered":"That Was The Week That Was: 29 January \u2013 2 February 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"New York, they claim, is so famous they named it twice.\u00a0 What might be fairly momentous announcements in aviation, on the other hand, appear to be so momentous that you have to make them twice to hope to get any traction.\u00a0 We reported last week on the fact that a number of African states have agreed to try to establish a pan-African aviation area.\u00a0 We seemed to be the only people that noticed the announcement. So, to their credit, they tried again.\u00a0 On Monday<\/strong>, they resent out the announcement.\u00a0 This time, the FT picked it up and the rest is history\u2026\r\n\r\nPresumably there will be lots of work for consultants that can sell their expertise, gleaned over many years of working in Europe on developing the European common aviation area.\u00a0 For all the words written about that remarkable achievement, there is no seminal textbook about it.\u00a0 That might be because in fact, how to do something is not always clear, and the reality is that mistakes were made.\u00a0 It is the mistakes that are the interesting things \u2013 what we really need is not a book about how to do it, but one about how NOT to do it.\r\n\r\nTuesday<\/strong> on the other hand, saw an aviation story of a very different ilk.\u00a0 An aircraft full of plumbers had to turn back because the toilet was blocked.\u00a0 Apparently one needed to address the issue from outside the aircraft, but this was the only call-out fee these plumbers turned down.\r\n\r\nMore importantly, Tuesday also saw the conclusion of the negotiations between Qatar, in the red corner and the US, in the blue corner.\u00a0 This was supposed to be the culmination of three years of lobbying and campaigning by the US carriers against the nasty Gulf carriers, who were demonised for what was seen as \u2018unfair competition\u2019.\u00a0 You will no doubt appreciate that the unfairness was in terms of outcome, not opportunity.\u00a0 Delta in particular seemed to be channelling their inner Trump years before Trump came along.\u00a0 Sad!\r\n\r\nAnd after all that work, and money, and angst?\u00a0 The results were best described as underwhelming.\u00a0 It is hard to believe that the Aviation Intelligence Reporter<\/em> will not delve more deeply into this.\r\n\r\nWhich lead us to Wednesday<\/strong>, and the leaking of the EU position for the negotiations with the UK over Brexit.\u00a0 Imagine our surprise when there in amongst 50 or so very dull slides was the initial string LPF.\u00a0 Yes!\u00a0 LPF \u2013 level playing field.\u00a0 At the Aviation Intelligence Reporter<\/em> we tried to make that a thing two years ago!\u00a0 We were just too early for our own good.\u00a0 Their own good is what the EC\u2019s negotiators have in mind too when considering their LPF.\u00a0 They are doing this for the good of the UK side.\u00a0 Funny how after the hype of the Olympics, \u2018Team GB\u2019 seems to have been gently parked.\r\n\r\nBy Thursday<\/strong>, the alcohol industry, or the head of Pernot Richard in any event, was warning that taxes on alcohol merely punish abusers, not the responsible.\u00a0 How would that scan if we tried translating that over to the aviation environment?\u00a0 We are taxing abusers, not the responsible.\u00a0 As an industry, we do not encourage frequent abusers\u2026\u00a0 etc.\r\n\r\nFinally, on Friday<\/strong> the UK CAA opened a consultation<\/a> on airline seating allocations for group seating purchases. \u00a0This, in the wake of accusations that airlines are separating travellers, requiring groups to pay extra fees in order to sit together.\u00a0 Spring breaks and British stag-dos will never be the same.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York, they claim, is so famous they named it twice.\u00a0 What might be fairly momentous announcements in aviation, on the other hand, appear to be so momentous that you have to make them twice to hope to get any traction.\u00a0 We reported last week on the fact that a number of African states have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airlines","category-airports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769","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=769"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":800,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions\/800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}