That Was The Week That Was 22-26 November
The best laid plans of mice and men…
On Monday of the week that was, the great and the good gathered at Eurocontrol to discuss sustainability. There was a general sense of optimism and hope in the air, even as Belgium was starting to lock down again, in the face of the Omicron variant’s arrival. Subscribers to Aviation Intelligence Reporter will get a full summary of the Summit and its interesting conclusions. So confident was the industry that all that was needed was a little coordination and tinkering that 12 travel and tourism bodies combined forces to release an urgent call for exactly that – a renewed push for booster shots, continued coordination on the European Digital Covid Certificate and a move to risk-based, coordinated responses rather than a country-by-country approach.
Tuesday saw a more general understanding of the gravity of the situation, as more and more countries were being added to various blacklists. For some reason, the memo to not work on a nationality basis did not make it to the US State Department, as it added various countries to their list of ‘Do Not Travel’ countries. Bizarrely, you can still travel to nine European countries if you are an American, but not the other 22. Maybe the industry should be talking to them about their nationality-based approach.
You have to feel sorry for South Africa in all of this, because it is not their variant; it is just a variant that their scientists isolated first. A bit like Spain during the Spanish Flu a century ago. Having been neutral in WWI, the deaths were more obvious in Spain first.
The joint declaration on Monday was from 12 travel and tourism organisation, but not IATA, so ever keen to stay relevant, it too had to put out a document. It came out on Wednesday. IATA’s is a blueprint and fair play to them, there is some blue printing in it. They want an end to travel bans for the vaccinated and those that have a negative PCR test. The timing of this blueprint was curious, just as travel bans were roaring back. It makes you wonder if King Canut had a blueprint. Yes, I know he was trying to make the point that he could not stop the tide, but I very much doubt that was IATA’s aim.
But amid all this gloom, there was good news for those worried about where the centre of world tourism might be. On Thursday, no lesser authority than the UNWTO itself sent out a press release to solve this particular mystery. For at least until Saturday, Spain was to be the centre of world tourism. The hunt for the centre of world tourism for the other 362 days continues.
By now, Omicron was overshadowing most everything else in aviation. The fact that Omicron is an anagram of ‘moronic’ was sadly all the crazy set needed to throw fuel on the fire of their conspiracy theories. Luckily, in aviation we have our own set of particular theories and it was not long before they came out again… Yes, out came the call to reopen travel on the grounds that whatever damage that was to be caused by travellers moving between countries had been done by now. Right. The travel bans are an attempt to slow the virus and give the health system time to react. On this analysis there is no need to social distance, or wear masks, because the damage is already out there.
Finally, on Friday Qantas decided to channel its inner belief in the keep travelling theory, only it doubled down and made it about the environment. It has created a new category of frequent flyer – the green membership tier. Make sustainable choices when you shop and then you can fly!