{"id":819,"date":"2018-05-04T17:00:02","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T15:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=819"},"modified":"2018-05-07T11:40:10","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T09:40:10","slug":"that-was-the-week-that-was-30-april-04-may","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=819","title":{"rendered":"That Was The Week That Was: 30 April \u2013 04 May"},"content":{"rendered":"The week that was started with Brexit \u2013 which week does not?\u00a0 The European Parliament spent some time looking at Brexit and tourism last week.\u00a0 The CEO of the Europe Travel Operators\u2019 Association stretched hard for his classical reference books to help explain what is classical only in the sense of being a classic stuff up.\u00a0 Brexit, Tom Jenkins said, is a Chimera, coming out of the blocks at high speed.\u00a0 True it is that Brexit is a fantastical idea, so Jenkins rounded the top corner determined to take gold.\u00a0 The big issue is jobs.\u00a0 Jobs and growth.\u00a0 The two big issues are jobs and growth\u2026 Jenkins would have gone on to say if he was a fan of Monty Python\u2019s Spanish Inquisition routine.\r\n\r\nStill, the Inquisition was a vein of classical reference worth further mining, at least in Jenkin\u2019s mind.\u00a0 He pointed out the damage being done across Europe, both within the UK and without, by Brexit.\u00a0 It is in no-one\u2019s national interest to pursue this Chimera, he said.\u00a0 Perhaps Brexit could be Deus ex Machina\u2026\u00a0 As the great Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating once observed, in any fight between principle and self-interest, back self-interest, because you can be sure it is in there fighting. So Jenkin is on the right track. \u00a0His error perhaps is to assume that there is a Deus anywhere near Brexit.\u00a0 It is hard to imagine a Machina less blessed with a Deus.\u00a0 It is a Machina Sine Deus.\u00a0 No Deus would want to be seen anywhere near it.\r\n\r\nBut if there is to be a Deus in aviation, Dr Fang Liu of ICAO knows who it is to be: President Xi.\u00a0 Once, UN employees, on being appointed, were required to sign a pledge that they would not give preference to their home nation\u2019s interests.\u00a0 On Tuesday <\/strong>Dr Liu spoke at Wuhan University.\u00a0 See if you can spot the pledge to not favour one\u2019s home nation<\/a> here: \u201c\u2026air transport has become established as a form of \u2018sky silk road\u2019 globally\u2026 and how with greater collaboration and assistance, for example through ICAO\u2019s \u201cNo Country Left Behind\u201d initiative, aviation can help many \u2018Belt and Road\u2019 States to achieve greater prosperity\u2026\u201d.\u00a0 The response, the outrage, was deafening only in its silence.\u00a0 On the other hand, you have to admire someone that tells China how important the rule of law is.\r\n\r\nWe have remarked before about how important to your lobbying it is to have a compliant MEP in your pocket, to ask the relevant part of the Commission a question that highlights your issue.\u00a0 The Controllers\u2019 unions have found their patsy in Francesc Gumbus a Spanish, or is that Catalonian centre-right MEP.\u00a0 He asked a question<\/a> on Wednesday<\/strong> about just how put upon Spanish controllers are and how very poorly paid they are.\u00a0 Right.\r\n\r\nThursday<\/strong> saw Brexit back on the agenda, if it ever left it, with Wizz Air announcing that it had now set up a UK operation.\u00a0 The ownership and control provisions are under increasing pressure as national interest pushes both sides to protect their investments.\u00a0 The ACI, in the meantime, released another study<\/a> that suggests that airfares and airport charges are unrelated.\u00a0 What matters is competition at particular airports.\r\n\r\nAll these strands came together by Friday <\/strong>with Norwegian, subject to a takeover bid from IAG saying that IAG has sent two offers and that other suitors are circling. \u00a0If IAG where to acquire Norwegian, two airline groups, IAG and easyJet would have more than 80% of the slots at Gatwick.\u00a0 That would be a Dues in the Machina of airline competition.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The week that was started with Brexit \u2013 which week does not?\u00a0 The European Parliament spent some time looking at Brexit and tourism last week.\u00a0 The CEO of the Europe Travel Operators\u2019 Association stretched hard for his classical reference books to help explain what is classical only in the sense of being a classic stuff […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15,11,33,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-traffic-management","category-airlines","category-airports","category-international-air-transport-association","category-international-civil-aviation-organization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819","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=819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":820,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions\/820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}