{"id":774,"date":"2018-02-16T17:00:17","date_gmt":"2018-02-16T15:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=774"},"modified":"2019-07-23T11:43:49","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T09:43:49","slug":"that-was-the-week-that-was-12-16-february","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=774","title":{"rendered":"That Was The Week That Was: 12 – 16 February"},"content":{"rendered":"Another big week for aviation \u2013 aren\u2019t they all? \u2013 with news that the mainstream press somehow failed to notice.\u00a0 It must be so frustrating for the airline PR departments, pumping out \u2018news\u2019 at a furious rate, only to be largely ignored.\r\n\r\nMonday<\/strong> saw the long-awaited release of the President Trump Infrastructure Plan<\/a>, to make America great again, or something.\u00a0 It has the economic credibility of a bankrupt casino\u2019s application for an overdraft extension, but it does talk about airports.\u00a0 Trump, you may recall, noted that US airports are \u2018third world\u2019 during the campaign.\u00a0 Airports all over the developing world should take umbrage.\u00a0 The solution proposed is best called \u2018cash free\u2019 but it is a start.\u00a0 Most importantly, and in line with Aviation Advocacy\u2019s thinking, liberating the airports to develop as they see fit and without the dead hand of the incumbent airlines dominating them is a good thing.\u00a0 The plan gives much more funding authority to airports and removes limitations on the number of airports that can participate in a privatisation programme.\r\n\r\nNonetheless, it puts the IATA statement of outright opposition to privatisation into context.\u00a0 Game on.\r\n\r\nThe great game though, according to Sir Tim Clark of Emirates, is not going to be about physical infrastructure; it is going to be about data, and big data.\u00a0 Talking on Tuesday<\/strong>, he noted that he is making sure that Emirates is ready.\u00a0 He assumes a complete and total re-engineering of the airline, but he is afraid that others are not going to be ready.\u00a0 This raises an interesting question.\u00a0 Why is he making these concerns public?\u00a0 Given that he might have a commercial advantage in seeing this before others, he should not talk about it but just do it.\u00a0 Given the structure of aviation, tied as it is to a World War II regulatory structure, maybe he knows that he will need at least some other airlines to survive?\r\n\r\nOn cue, the SG of ICAO, Dr Fang Lui looked from the other end of the telescope and told e-retailers that aviation was a vital part of their business model.\u00a0 Ask not what you can learn from others\u2026\u00a0 Does the word hubris spring to mind?\r\n\r\nBy Wednesday<\/strong>, ICAO\u2019s customary hubris was fading into the background, trumped.\u00a0 Oman Airlines put out a press release noting that they were a fundamental part of Heathrow\u2019s noise reduction.\u00a0 Well done them.\r\n\r\nSuspecting that no-one would notice, given that it was the Chinese New Year, on Thursday<\/strong> the New York Times published an article<\/a> talking about the UK train system.\u00a0 Who knew the New York Times was a Brexiteer?\u00a0 The problem, according to the NYT, is that Britain\u2019s trains are owned by \u2018foreigners\u2019.\u00a0 Or \u2018Europeans\u2019, which would be the correct term for them at the moment.\u00a0 A bit like the British, in fact, at least until next year.\r\n\r\nOr, maybe you could say that they are owned by decent railway operators.\u00a0 To the extent the faux outrage had a point it was that the privatisation of UK rail had allowed state-owned continental European railway operators into the fold.\u00a0 In response to a competitive tender.\u00a0 The view of the European legacy carriers to the intrusion of state-owned and thus state-aided companies doing things better can be predicted at 50 paces.\r\n\r\nSo that is a bad thing about Europe then, presumably.\u00a0 Unlike the case the Scottish whisky makers brought against a German whisky maker that wanted to call its product Glen Buchenbach.\u00a0 The Scots were outraged.\u00a0 It is to be hoped that this European Court of Justice case<\/a> is finalised before Mrs May\u2019s no ECJ red line cuts in.\r\n\r\nBut Friday<\/strong> was saving the best until last.\u00a0 Alitalia was proud to announce that it is the most punctual airline in the world.\u00a0 Third in Europe and sixth amongst \u2018major international airlines\u2019 is all it takes to bring this gong home, apparently.\u00a0 Hubris or hutzpah?\u00a0 You be the judge.\r\n\r\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another big week for aviation \u2013 aren\u2019t they all? \u2013 with news that the mainstream press somehow failed to notice.\u00a0 It must be so frustrating for the airline PR departments, pumping out \u2018news\u2019 at a furious rate, only to be largely ignored.<\/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-774","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\/774","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=774"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774\/revisions\/799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}