{"id":772,"date":"2018-02-09T17:00:53","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T15:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=772"},"modified":"2019-07-23T11:43:52","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T09:43:52","slug":"that-was-the-week-that-was-5-9-february-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=772","title":{"rendered":"That Was the Week That Was: 5-9 February 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"The weekend saw the start of yet another air show, this time in Singapore.\u00a0 There were lots of stories about aircraft sales and the Boeing Airbus head-to-head, but the big story was, as ever, not covered.\u00a0 IATA, as it is want when the DG goes anywhere, took the opportunity to release yet another press release about how the world needs to gift its members more infrastructure.\u00a0 This time, Asian governments were being told to open their wallets and to repeat after Alexandre du Juniac \u2018Help yourself\u2019.\u00a0 No mention, you will note from the pro-forma release, on how this will be paid for, but hey!\u00a0 Hand up anyone brave enough to suggest that increased charges might be a good idea.\u00a0 What about taxes?<!--more-->\r\n\r\n<strong>Monday<\/strong> was spent therefore looking, without success, at coverage of that oft-repeated message.\u00a0 What did get some coverage, <a href=\"https:\/\/gettingthedealthrough.com\/article\/5967\/lawyers-surprised-iata-chiefs-stance-airport-privatisation\">at least amongst the lawyers<\/a>, was the confession from du Juniac that airport privatisations were a failure.\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 How would IATA know?\u00a0 Their complaint is that charges are high.\u00a0 We have analysed this claim in the <em>Aviation Intelligence Reporter<\/em> over the last few months and it is largely bunkum.\u00a0 To be fair, charges can go up, but that is irrelevant to the airlines who continue to have record growth, and profits.\u00a0 Given that the airlines are not prepared to fund new runways and airports \u2013 and in the case of IAG\u2019s Willie Walsh, are on an active campaign to stop Heathrow\u2019s expansion \u2013 they are not really interested parties any way.\r\n\r\nNonetheless, airport charges are a hot topic at the moment.\u00a0 The European Commission is mid-consultation.\u00a0 That has brought the crazies out of the woodwork.\u00a0 Despite even the Commission\u2019s hired consultants saying that in Europe, the UK system is the best one, IATA attacked it.\u00a0 Which is odd, given that:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Their members are on the record for endorsing it; and<\/li>\r\n \t<li>IATA has never shown up for a consultation.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nBy <strong>Tuesday,<\/strong> IATA\u2019s own <em>Pravda<\/em>, <em>Airlines International<\/em> was gracing mailing boxes around the world, and what a bumper edition it was.\u00a0 It had the usual instructions on how to form an orderly queue to receive your free infrastructure and <a href=\"http:\/\/airlines.iata.org\/news\/heading-off-an-infrastructure-crisis\">complain<\/a> that there is not enough of it; but also, as a special feature, there was an attack on the Australian airport charges regime.\u00a0 Australia\u2019s system is similar to the UK\u2019s (or, more accurately, the UK\u2019s is similar to Australia\u2019s).\u00a0 The system requires the airports and the airlines to reach commercial decisions.\u00a0 There is no regulation but the threat of regulation.\u00a0 Despite arraying quotes of people saying just how bad the Australian system was, one very important fact was overlooked.\u00a0 If an airline, you know, one of IATA\u2019s members, has a problem, all they have to do is bring a complaint via the proper channels \u2013 funnily enough that does not include the IATA in-house magazine \u2013 and regulation will rain down.\u00a0 No airline has done this.\u00a0 Why might that be?\u00a0 This was not canvassed in the <em>Pravda<\/em>.\u00a0 Nor was why the magazine accepts advertisements from airports.\u00a0 If they are not competing, why advertise?\r\n\r\n<strong>Wednesday<\/strong> saw the release from the air show of an interview with the DG of DG MOVE, Henrik Hololei, who noted that a post-Brexit UK would not be in EASA.\u00a0 That cannot have warmed the hearts of the UK CAA, the DGCA of which is on the record, with a very strong speech, about just how vital it is that the UK does remain within EASA.\u00a0 Speaking at a Commons Parliamentary Committee meeting late last year, the airlines, including Willie Walsh himself said exactly that too.\u00a0 Indeed, as far as IAG is concerned, EASA membership is the only thing that matters.\r\n\r\nCloser to home, at least for the Commission, they are now also facing a petition from the Belgian PM that Brussels Airlines is to be fully absorbed into Eurowings by its owner, Lufthansa.\u00a0 This, notwithstanding that the Commission cleared the Lufthansa purchase of Brussels Airlines in 2007.\u00a0 Nevertheless, that did not go down well, as once again, nationalism rears its ugly head.\u00a0 Not helping was the interview with the CEO of Brussels Airlines in the <em>Pravda<\/em> that came out this very week about just how very well things were going at Brussels Airlines.\r\n\r\nBrexit was on the minds of easyJet on <strong>Thursday<\/strong>.\u00a0 They <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/7c6796e8-0cf6-11e8-8eb7-42f857ea9f09\">changed their structure<\/a> so that more than 50% of its ownership was European \u2013 allowing it to establish a base in Austria, whilst also having a free-standing UK company to use the UK AOC.\u00a0 That is fine insofar as it goes, in that it addresses the ownership requirements.\u00a0 What remains untested is the \u2018and control\u2019 bit of the test.\u00a0 The Commission generally is taking a bullish approach to Brexit at the moment.\u00a0 Will they read the entire test (\u2018substantial ownership and effective control\u2019) before approving of this arrangement?\r\n\r\nBy <strong>Friday<\/strong>, more Brexit reality was sinking in.\u00a0 The tour operators advised that in-bound tourism to the UK was already suffering because of Brexit.\u00a0 Well, it would be wouldn\u2019t it? \u00a0Xenophobia is not traditionally a great tourist attraction \u2013 particularly to foreigners\u2026","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The weekend saw the start of yet another air show, this time in Singapore.\u00a0 There were lots of stories about aircraft sales and the Boeing Airbus head-to-head, but the big story was, as ever, not covered.\u00a0 IATA, as it is want when the DG goes anywhere, took the opportunity to release yet another press release [&hellip;]<\/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-772","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\/772","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=772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":773,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions\/773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}