That Was The Week That Was 04-08 April
April is the most stressed month
TS Elliot told us that April is the cruellest month, mixing lust and mud (or something like that; I may have paraphrased it a little bit). I am sure Elliot was really trying to tell us that April is the most stressful month, particularly when your entire aviation system is waking from hibernation. No, not your entire aviation system, the short-haul, European part of it. Much of the long-haul business, particularly to Asia, remains in the cave, tossing and turning, hitting the snooze button and pulling the quilt over its head.
Last week, you may recall, we suggested that perhaps we need a system of regular stress tests to assess, beyond the statutory AOC issuance level, the financial and operational ability of airlines to cope with a sudden loss of market. It is just as important to do that for airports and for ANSPs. I highlighted some of the problems last week, but this week makes it look like last week simply was not trying to make life hard. To be fair, who could have predicted that the Easter holiday would arrive and with it some of the busiest travel days of the year? Who can possibly keep track of that lunar festival on our solar calendar? OK, sure, the Astronomer Royale, but who else?
The airlines that have rebounded most rapidly are the airlines that retrenched the fewest staff and that keep their crews rotating around the flights that were being operated to keep the crews’ licences current, and the fleet in service. Did anyone doling out State Aid to the airlines check that the money was being spent to do that? Why not? But now, those airlines are running into problems. Airports are not yet ready to meet this surge in demand.
The State Aid funding that was handed over hugely favours the airlines over the airports and the ANSPs (although much of that aid was less overt). In normal time, about 20% of an airline’s revenue is paid to airports and ANSPs in fees. Instead, in the crisis, the aid that came into the airlines and that was that. None then went on, in the ordinary course, to the rest of the ecosystem. You do not need to be a zoologist to see that this is when the ecosystem might start to break down.
Furthermore, the airlines and the ANSPs remain under pressure from the airports to always charge less. This week, the week that was, speaking to CANSO, the DG of IATA, Willie Walsh, broke from his extremely good, almost convincing Mr-Nice-Guy character, to let rip into the charges ANSPs charge. He is on the record as not supporting paying for the lost revenue ANSPs and airports lost in the crisis too. Well, he would be.
Something has got to give. We can race to the bottom, or we can make working at an airport, in bits of an airline that do not involve a fancy hat – not a fashion statement, an overt and obvious expression of industrial muscle – in the thankless security processing area, and indeed an ANSP something that in a rising jobs market, is attractive enough to be, well, attractive. Failure to do that will mean that we do not build back better, we build back just as, or even more, miserable for the travelling public.