{"id":958,"date":"2020-03-30T10:49:21","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T08:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=958"},"modified":"2020-04-27T10:59:06","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T08:59:06","slug":"that-was-the-week-that-was-30-march-3-april-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=958","title":{"rendered":"That Was The Week That Was: 30 March \u2013 3 April"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Welcome back to TWTWTW! After a short \u2013 well, of a couple of months \u2013 break we thought it was time to lift the spirits and pick up our good habit by looking back on the news that caught our attention in the week that was.
The theme this week was: Damage Control.  The damage to air transport caused by the spreading COVID-19 virus and government-imposed travel restrictions is common knowledge, but ICYMI here is a refresher of the dramatic state of play, based on Eurocontrol data<\/a>:  Flight movements (including international and domestic arrivals and departures) across the European network were down 85% compared to last year. In other words, the skies were eerily calm and quiet. Fleets grounded. Airports empty.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monday<\/strong> saw the Dutch Minister for Infrastructure, Cora van Nieuwenhuizen, play her bit to control the potential financial damage to airlines by allowing them to issue vouchers for cancelled flights rather than reimbursing passengers. \u201cAirlines are not sufficiently liquid in the short term to cover all refund tickets,\u201d van Nieuwenhuizen wrote<\/a> to the country\u2019s MPs. She acknowledged the move is against the infamous pro-consumer EC 261\/2004 legislation, but so be it. Why care about the damage to passengers who are not getting their money back\u2013within seven days, as required by 261\u2014 or face an increase in post-Covid-19 fares? Why consider the Commission\u2019s guidelines<\/a>, published on 18 March, on EU air passenger rights in the context of Covid-19, which state:  \u201cIn the case of a flight cancellation by the airlines (no matter what the cause is), Article 5 obliges the operating air carrier to offer the passengers the choice among: a) reimbursement (refund); b) re-routing at the earliest opportunity, or  c) re-routing at a later date at the passenger’s convenience.\u201d  These guidelines, Commissioner for Transport Adina V?lean pledged<\/a>, \u201cwill provide much-needed legal certainty on how to apply EU passenger rights in a coordinated manner across our Union.\u201d Right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Tuesday <\/strong>saw IATA calling on the world\u2019s press corps to support the travel vouchers idea. Sold but un-flown tickets represent a potential liability for the industry of up to $35 billion in the second quarter alone, explained the trade body\u2019s chief economist, Brian Pearce, while IATA DG Alexandre de Juniac blamed governments for the flight cancellations. Airlines did not cancel flights in their own interest, he insisted, but because governments imposed travel restrictions and closed borders.  This, of course, validates why passengers must take on the role of airlines\u2019 banker and provide the much-needed liquidity. De Juniac nonetheless showed some compassion for passengers, admitting the voucher-no-refund practice is inconvenient for passengers as they would not get their money back, at least not the next 12 or 18 months. But, he concluded, \u201cit is a matter of survival for us.\u201d On the other side of the Atlantic, the widespread practice of issuing vouchers in place of cash refunds did not go down well with a group of nine US Democrat senators. With $58 billion in financial aid,  including $25 billion in grants for passenger airlines to keep employees on their payroll, \u201cwe believe your company has a moral responsibility to provide real refunds, not travel vouchers,\u201d they wrote<\/a> in a letter to 11 airline CEOs. Meanwhile, in The Hague, van Nieuwenhuizen took yet another damage control move and decided<\/a> to push back the already-delayed opening of Lelystad Airport by one year, to November 2021. The regional airport was developed as a twin gateway and \u201coverflow airport\u201d for Schiphol, but with AMS now lacking flow, let alone overflow and with one of its runways serving as parking lot for aircraft, there is no need to add capacity. Pre-covid-19 capacity crunch turned capacity cut. There is a silver lining in not opening Lelystad, the minister pointed out: residents will not be disturbed by low-level flights.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday<\/strong> was not a good day for Air France. The French airline had to accept defeat in its long-running efforts to convince the French government that the alleged massive subsidies to Qatar Airways were damaging its business. Akbar Al Baker, never shy of being in the limelight and spotting a good public relations opportunity, did not fail to tell the world, and France in particular, that his airline was asked by the French government, an Air France shareholder, to fly stranded French citizens home.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thursday<\/strong> saw Brussels Airlines stealing the headlines, with reports<\/a> that it might need an Alitalia-style bailout. A re-nationalisation is one of the scenarios under consideration by a group of high-level economists and bankers as funds to keep the carrier afloat are dying up. The Belgian government appears unwilling to inject unlimited cash without knowing the true state of its affairs. The unprecedented Covid-19 environment and the airline\u2019s ownership complicates the discussions as to who needs to bail out the airline\u2014the Belgian government because the airline is based in Brussels, employs mostly Belgian citizens or Lufthansa which owns 100% of SN Airholding. Brussels Airlines, in its current or in one of its prior forms, has never been a textbook example of how to operate profitably.  Even Lufthansa has struggled to turn the company around. Since taking full control in December 2016, it has zigzagged between strategies\u2014a hybrid model, followed by full network model, then a low-cost model under the wings of Eurowings, and back again to the network model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Friday <\/strong>saw the failure of IATA\u2019s voucher-no-refund lobby in the US and the Department of Transportation standing by its \u201cairline cancel\/ airline pays\u201d rule. The obligation of US and foreign airlines to provide prompt refunds, including the ticket price and any optional fee charged for services a passenger is unable to use, does not cease when the flight disruptions are outside of the carrier\u2019s control such as a result of government restrictions, the DOT stated<\/a>. Then, to matters worse, and bring the week that was back to where it began, the week ended on a really sour note for IATA: Covid-19 claimed its Annual General Meeting and World Air Transport Summit. The event had been scheduled to take place on 22-23 June in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome back to TWTWTW! After a short \u2013 well, of a couple of months \u2013 break we thought it was time to lift the spirits and pick up our good habit by looking back on the news that caught our attention in the week that was.The theme this week was: Damage Control.  The damage to […]<\/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-958","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\/958","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=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":962,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions\/962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}