{"id":780,"date":"2018-02-23T17:00:49","date_gmt":"2018-02-23T15:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=780"},"modified":"2019-07-23T11:43:46","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T09:43:46","slug":"that-was-the-week-that-was-19-23-february","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=780","title":{"rendered":"That Was The Week That Was: 19 \u2013 23 February"},"content":{"rendered":"What a week that was, the week that was.\u00a0 We risked having an existential week.\u00a0 We had to think about all the things that matter to us: ownership and control; Britain outside the European Common Aviation Market; the right to strike; and airport charges.\r\n\r\nKicking us off over the weekend <\/strong>was the announcement<\/a> from the very precociously named US Republican congressman, Dave Brat, that he was moving to change the currently extremely restrictive US rules on ownership and control of US airlines to bring them into line with the rest of the world.\u00a0 That is, to change the rules of non-US ownership to 49% from the current 25%.\u00a0 So much for ownership.\u00a0 The jury is still out on control.\u00a0 Part of his draft bill is a sentence that requires management of US airlines to be performed by US citizens, or holders of the right to residency in the US.\u00a0 Now that verges on the xenophobic, depending on how one chooses to parse the last little bit.\r\n\r\nWhat is more intriguing is why Brat would come up with this now?\u00a0 The US majors are doing well; they need no foreign money to strengthen their balance sheets, unlike say ten years ago.\u00a0 Congressman Brat is a Trump Republican.\u00a0 Watch this space.\r\n\r\nLeading neatly to that new old chestnut: Brexit.\u00a0 It is rumoured that there might be a total relaxation of ownership and control of airlines by the UK government in reaction to Brexit.\u00a0 That might be because of things like the answer President of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker , gave on Tuesday <\/strong>to a question on notice from an MEP about Brexit.\u00a0 Never on to shy away from Brit bashing, Juncker wrote, \u2018the Commission has taken note of the decision by the United Kingdom Government that it does not want the future relations with the Union to be based on the EU single aviation market. The outcome of the withdrawal negotiations on the future relations will determine the nature of the future EU\/UK aviation relations.\u2019\r\n\r\nA total relaxation of ownership and control rules by the UK would explain IAG’s statements that they have no problems with traffic rights post Brexit.\u00a0 easyJet has said the UK CAA would recognise their UK spin-off airline as a UK airline after the holding becomes 51% EU owned.\u00a0 Norwegian has also said NUK will be able to continue expanding after Brexit.\u00a0 Either there is something in the UK water or something else is going on.\u00a0 France on the other hand, is plotting a new law to restrict or prevent foreign take-overs and control of key sectors, which seem to include transport.\r\n\r\nBy Wednesday<\/strong> we were about ready for a lie down, but the big news just kept on coming.\u00a0 You may not have noticed it, also on Tuesday the European Commission Ombudsperson announced the introduction of a simplified procedure for bringing complaints to her office.\u00a0 First cab off the rank?\u00a0 The controllers.\u00a0 Of course.\u00a0 They claim, and have now formally lodged a complaint<\/a> that, the Commission\u2019s Aviation Strategy document from 2017 and the staff working document on ATM do not respect their fundamental right to strike.\u00a0 That might of course be because that is not a European competency.\r\n\r\nYou may recall that the ETF and ATCEUC had a meeting with Commissioners Bulc and Thyssen about this last summer. Obviously the meeting did not go well… They were fuming about the Communication and SWD, which were part of the DG Move’s Open & Connected package. \u00a0They were informed of the content one day before the release, which was one day later than journalists who were shuttled to Brussels from all over Europe.\u00a0 Mind you, CANSO was not informed about the content of the Communication either.\r\n\r\nAs a first step the Ombudsman’s office has asked for a meeting with the Commission to inspect documents that are relevant to the complaint. On the basis of this meeting, the Ombudsman will then decide on her next steps. This is perhaps the most remarkable part of this story.\u00a0 We would be happy to give the documents to the Ombudsman. They are online.\u00a0 Quite why she needs to go and see the Commission to inspect them is a mystery.\r\n\r\nThursday<\/strong> saw the DG of IATA, Alexandre du Juniac speaking at the Wings Club<\/a> in New York.\u00a0 You will be shocked to learn that he wants everyone else to give the airlines money and infrastructure.\u00a0 Obviously, even for IATA that would be too blatant, so it was dressed up as using \u2018common principles\u2019 but you can guess what they add up to\u2026\u00a0 The Business of Freedom demands nothing less.\u00a0 Stress the \u2018free\u2019 part.\r\n\r\nSo it was probably not helpful that his Latin American members\u2019 other association, ALTA, published a very thoughtful piece<\/a> that noted that maybe taxes pay for the very things that generate passengers.\u00a0 It might be time, it concludes to stop and think.\u00a0 That will never catch on around the aviation industry.\r\n\r\nWhich neatly took us to the end of the week, and what a week it had been.\u00a0 But good old dependable, the US carriers themselves backed up du Juniac, announcing<\/a> that they oppose any tax increases too.\u00a0 What a shock.\u00a0 Form an orderly queue for your handouts here!","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a week that was, the week that was.\u00a0 We risked having an existential week.\u00a0 We had to think about all the things that matter to us: ownership and control; Britain outside the European Common Aviation Market; the right to strike; and airport charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,15,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-services-agreements","category-airlines","category-airports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780","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=780"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":798,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions\/798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}