{"id":783,"date":"2018-03-02T17:00:57","date_gmt":"2018-03-02T15:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=783"},"modified":"2019-07-23T11:43:43","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T09:43:43","slug":"that-was-the-week-that-was-26-february-2-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=783","title":{"rendered":"That Was The Week That Was: 26 February \u2013 2 March"},"content":{"rendered":"Once, Barcelona\u2019s Mobile World Congress was relevant to aviation mostly because extra flights were needed to get delegates there.\u00a0 Not any more. \u00a0Last week kicked off with a further merger of aviation and telecoms.\u00a0 OneWeb announced a partnership<\/a>\u00a0 with Airbus, airtel, Delta, and Sprint \u2013 the Seamless Air Alliance.\u00a0\u00a0 The problems with in-flight connectivity are myriad, but they are not technical.\u00a0 \u2018Seamless\u2019 is an inspiring goal.\u00a0 In commercial aviation, ubiquitous gate-to-gate service is the Holy Grail.\u00a0 It can mean telecommunications authorisations for every earth station on every aircraft from every jurisdiction you fly to \u2013 a tangled regulatory morass.\u00a0 We wish the Seamless Air Alliance bonne chance<\/em>.\r\n\r\nTuesday<\/strong> all eyes focused on Bulgaria.\u00a0 There, IATA\u2019s scream of frustration at the snail\u2019s pace of reform that is the Single European Sky went up several decibels.\u00a0 Divide and conquer is the strategy and this week IATA separated Bulgaria from the herd.\u00a0 IATA is working with Bulatsa to improve things.\u00a0 It did not start well.\u00a0 The press release<\/a> from IATA\u2019s crack comms team was a dialogue of the deaf.\u00a0 The Bulgarians talked about the importance of transport; IATA demanded Bulgaria, as President of the Council of the EU, give the airlines more money.\u00a0 It was not even subtle.\r\n\r\nWednesday<\/strong> was devoted to tourism.\u00a0 Stats were presented, importances underlined and views with the DG of the UNWTO exchanged.\u00a0 This is now, officially, the Year of Chinese Tourism.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 The legacy carriers were worried about the Gulf carriers.\u00a0 Did they know that outside their usual circle of partners-du-Stockholm Syndrome, DG GROW was smothering their efforts at controlling growth?\r\n\r\nOne of the big issues identified was the lack of Chinese speakers.\u00a0 The Chinese airlines have lots of them\u2026\r\n\r\nThursday <\/strong>saw the most shocking revelation<\/a> of the week.\u00a0 How did this pass without comment?\u00a0 As the great Tom Lehrer said when Kissinger won a Nobel Peace Prize, \u2018What can a satirist say that is funnier than real life?\u2019\u00a0 Maybe there was no comment because none were needed.\u00a0 After a week of US corporations finding anti-gun religion and withdrawing special offers to members of the NRA \u2013 hoping no doubt for some retrospective passive goodwill \u2013 Delta, never slow to sniff a chance to dress piously,\u00a0 lost their state fuel tax break for jumping on that band wagon.\u00a0 Wait a minute, this is not just State Aid \u2013 something that Delta wants no airline, other than themselves, to get the benefit of \u2013 being taken away for failing to support the NRA.\u00a0 Hats off to the Gulf carriers for not making much, much mileage from this.\r\n\r\nOn Friday<\/strong>, UK Prime Minister Theresa May stood firm<\/a> on negotiating Brexit.\u00a0 Well, sort of.\u00a0 She did capitulate to demands of the aerospace industry to allow the movement of goods between the UK and EU in light of warnings about processing chaos for cargo at airports and Airbus saying it may have stockpile parts like wings made in the UK.\u00a0 All this while cosying up to the US in a bid to replace what they are currently about to Brexit from \u2013 an open skies agreement.\u00a0 Remember, the fall back is Bermuda II.\u00a0 The sticking points?\u00a0 Ownership and control \u00a0\u2013 the US is not all that interesting in liberalisation \u2013 and US fifth-freedom rights out of the UK (not on their metal, of course, but on code-shares).\u00a0 The UK will need to agree that with the EU.\u00a0 Will the legacy carriers in continental Europe think that a good idea?\u00a0 Interlining may live again!","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once, Barcelona\u2019s Mobile World Congress was relevant to aviation mostly because extra flights were needed to get delegates there.\u00a0 Not any more. \u00a0Last week kicked off with a further merger of aviation and telecoms.\u00a0 OneWeb announced a partnership\u00a0 with Airbus, airtel, Delta, and Sprint \u2013 the Seamless Air Alliance.\u00a0\u00a0 The problems with in-flight connectivity are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783","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=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":797,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions\/797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}