That Was The Week That Was 13-17 December 2021
Stop Laughing
Normally, this is the season of good cheer, of festive gatherings and of well wishing. Normally. At the moment it is starting to feel a lot like last year. We weren’t smiling then, we are not likely to be smiling this year either, as Omicron weaves its web and lockdowns rear their head…
On Monday the Commission announced that it was approving €10.3 million in state aid for Romania’s airports. Slowly, the aid that was entirely focused on helping airlines preserve the status quo of their operations is being caught up by aid to the rest of the industry. At this rate, by about 2057 the numbers will be equal. What this change of tack shows, but no-one will acknowledge, is that keeping the airlines afloat (a term used loosely in this context) in fact did not have ‘flow-down’ benefits for the rest of the industry. The money started its flow at the airlines and then it flowed down all the way to the airlines. Only now is that reality dawning – aviation is an ecosystem not a value chain.
For further evidence of why, perhaps, we should start to think outside the legacy airline box came on Tuesday, when Eurocontrol published a new report that noted whilst flights are returning, a lot of connectivity is not returning at the same pace. That is hardly surprising. A lot of those connections were to the long-haul flights that continue to lag, even before Omicron arrived. Nonetheless, the brains trust at IATA considered this to be evidence that slots are the one true answer, sorry, One True Answer – and by slots, of course, I mean the slot regime organised by and run for the benefit of, oh, wait, IATA’s members; not competition or innovation. They tweeted accordingly. I think that what this tweet implies is that we should freeze the entire aviation system until well after 2022, and not let any developments take root, but frankly, I would delight in being told what it actually means. There is a universe in which this tweet makes sense, but we are not standing in it.
In better news on Tuesday, the SESAR 3 Joint Undertaking was officially launched. The SESAR JU you will recall is responsible for finding and trailing new ATM technologies to help modernise ATM. Technical whizzes they may be, but sorry, a lot of history and culture seems to have washed past the SJU whilst they were in their labs working on science stuff. The first iteration was SESAR. The second should have been Augustus and this edition of this brave venture must surely be called Tiberius or Traffic Innovation BEyond Radar Instead of Usual Service.
You do not need me to remind you of the week that was, but by Wednesday the Omicron reality was starting to bite and what we now know to call the usual fears were starting to assert themselves. That means two things. First, as night follows day, governments around the world start to impose travel bans and restrictions on travellers, because they know that aviation is a vector for transmission. Then, as sure as day then succeeds the night, the airlines and airports put out a press release suggesting that given that transmission is now widespread, there is no reason to have a travel ban and flight restrictions. Sure enough, Wednesday saw that press release…
Thursday was the anniversary of the first flight by the Wright brothers – a flight that was airborne for less than the length of a B747, and which in some quarters remains disputed as the first flight – both Dos Santos in Brazil and Bleriot in France might also be in the running, but whether or not it was the first flight, there is no doubt that it was the first filmed flight. Marketing matters. WingX also released its report on business traffic for December, and it will take more than a Greek letter to stop business aviation. Biz-Av traffic is up on last year.
Given how grim the news became over the week, it is only right and proper that we note that of Friday that in honour of the 10th anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-Il, North Korea has banned laughing, as well as drinking and shopping. Over here in aviation we know what that feels like.
In the words of the great Bob Monkhouse – people used to laugh at me when I told them I wanted to be a comedian. They are not laughing now.