On Monday<\/strong>, Michael O\u2019Leary treated us to an enlightening start to the week. In his classic style of verbal \u2018richness\u2019 and blatant truths mixed with a bit of spin, the Ryanair Group chief executive slammed the UK\u2019s 14-day quarantine plan and questioned the rationale of the Italian government inc giving \u2013 again \u2013 state aid to Alitalia. This time the country\u2019s perennially loss-making flag carrier is set to receive \u20ac3 billion. To put that in some context, O\u2019Leary remarked, the Italian government is awarding \u20ac1 billion of aid to the Italian education system. A larger concern must be the distortion of the European airline industry following the massive bailouts by governments of their flag carriers, all of which got the blessing of the European Commission without too much (read: without any) scrutiny. \u201cWe almost feel sorry them facing pressure from capitals, Berlin, Paris, Rome and so on to bend existing rules and allow significant amounts of state aid to flag carrier airlines,\u201d Ryanair\u2019s Group Chief Legal & Regulatory Officer Juliusz Komorek revealed. \u201c<\/em>So we will be assisting the EU Commission with appeals of those decisions to European court and hoping that the court will accept our requests to deal with these matters in an expedited manner.\u201d COVID-19 has turned the world upside down, but who would have thought that it would turn Ryanair into a pal of the Commission and friend and cheerleader of the ECJ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, the code at the moment is safety first, so what better to reassure passengers it is safe to fly in the COVID-19 era than strip Qatar\u2019s cabin crew of their attractive Bordeaux coloured outfits and put them in hazmat suits<\/a>, sterile-white full body protective gear, safety goggles, gloves, and a mask?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Airlines like to copy one other but not necessarily learn from each other. So on Tuesday<\/strong>, less than two years after British Airways experienced a major data breach and hackers harvested details of about 500,000 customers, easyJet admitted to a similar though slightly-larger scale incident. Hackers gained access to email addresses and travel details of about 9 million clients through a \u201chighly sophisticated cyber-attack\u201d and 2,208 customers also had their credit card details stolen. If the London-based budget carrier is to suffer the same fate as its London-based full-service counterpart, its prospects do not look prosperous. The Information Commissioner\u2019s Office, the U.K.\u2019s data protection agency, slapped a record \u00a3183 million fine on BA for infringements of the General Data Protection Regulation. That is excluding compensation pay-outs to customers resulting from class-action suits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was on the cards and it happened fast, as (too) close friends would expect it to go. Speaking of close friends, in late April IATA sent its position paper <\/a>to ICAO lobbying for a rewrite of CORSIA\u2019s baseline, and now the European Commission is endorsing it. Brussels tabled a proposal<\/a> for adoption by EU member states to adjust the baseline to take into account the impact of the pandemic on air travel and CO2 levels. Out is the initial baseline, the average level of emissions from international flights from 2019 and 2020, from which annual growth and future offsetting requirements will be calculated to achieve carbon neutral growth from 2020. In is the new baseline: only 2019 emissions. \u201cThe pandemic would lead to a substantially lower CORSIA baseline\u2026 which would entail higher offsetting requirements,\u201d the European Commission noted. Hold on for a minute. Would higher offsetting requirements not support the objectives of the European Green Deal and help the global aviation industry keep its collective licence to grow by bringing emissions down quickly and permanently, as repeatedly propagated <\/a>by the same European Commission? Yes. But that is not what (too) close friends are for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wednesday<\/strong> saw IATA and ACI becoming pals, not best pals but better pals than in April when the airline trade body displayed a patronising stance vis-\u00e0-vis airports in requesting individual airports to detail the extent of their cost cutting measures so that it may offer \u2018advice\u2019 on how they should run their business. To add insult to injury, IATA\u2019s strategy document \u201cPotential financial and operational measures to mitigate COVD-19 impact related to Airports and ANSPs\u201d detailed a full range of measures on how airports should support airlines. Proposed measure included the postponement of aeronautical charges payments without surcharges or penalties, removal of automatic inflationary increases, waiver of parking fees, a review and scrutinization of investments and so on. \u00a0Some tensions were ironed out behind the scenes\u2014IATA dropped references to ‘airports should waive collection of charges’ and other similar demands\u2014prompting a partial public truce and a joint publication of a \u201cRoadmap for Aviation Industry Restart<\/a>\u201d. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n