That Was The Week That Was 19-23 September
The Law of Extremes – What Aviation can Teach Physics
Trying to get a quart into a pint pot is quite a task. One that stretches those that cling only to the physical world, to the hard reality of facts. Is it any wonder that in aviation we reject such approaches? Anyone that thinks that getting a quart into a pint pot is impossible has never heard of overbooking, of yield management and of expectation management. Such a person has no future in aviation.
Once, we might have said that such a person has no future in airlines, but the pandemic has done us a huge favour. Now, we can look well beyond that sort of limited, blinkered thinking. No longer is the task merely to fill to the brim an aircraft. Now, we are filling to the brim (and beyond) the airports and the airspace as well. We are even expecting our fuel suppliers, or at least our putative SAF fuel suppliers to do so too. Welcome to the club!
The airports have been busy this week, the week that was, thinking about slots and how to get a quart of aircraft into a pint of airport. The airlines, in a fit of responsible scheduling, think that getting about 30% less than a pint is prudent – but that is the debate about slot regulations for you. By bringing in the big guns of Germany and France, the airlines were able to convince the European Council that they should be allowed to waste 30% of all airport slots. That, it is fair to say, is not the attitude airlines take when it comes to seats. It is fair to say that the airports were underwhelmed.
In the meantime, noise around airports is also subject to a target and again, we are not going to get the noise limit quart into the pint pot of reality. The European Environment Agency has conceded that by 2030 it will not be able to reduce by 30% the number of citizens impacted by noise. For aviation that is basically about quieter aircraft (generally, tick) and night curfews (oh…). Still, that is nice to have compared to the all-in punt we are making on SAFs. Getting SAFs right is something that has to go right, every step of the way. The EEA came to the same conclusion.
Sadly, again we are at the quart: pint pot interface. To get enough feed stock to make the amounts of SAF required, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation, by broadening the sources of feedstock we risk making the situation worse! Oh dear. Mind you, that is nothing compared to opprobrium we are likely to face if word gets out that expanding the sources of possible feedstock for SAFs will take the food from the bowls of our pets.
Always keen to be seen to be able to juggle quarts like the rest of the industry, the ANSPs too got into the act this week. We are now at 90% of the pre-pandemic traffic. Unfortunately, due to the war in Ukraine, airspace closures (often controller, or lack of controller related) and military movements, we only have 80% of the airspace available. That will be a challenge. But nothing the airlines have not faced in the past inside the aircraft. Perhaps the ANSPs should take a leaf out of their customers’ books and start overbooking and deploying demand driven pricing. What is good for the pint is surely good for the quart.