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To Zimbabwe, where on Monday, we learnt, again, how hard it is to prove who owns an aircraft without the Cape Town Convention. There is a 777 in Harare at the moment with not one, not two, but five, yes five, different claims to ownership kicking around. Now that is a lawyer’s picnic if it ever gets to court.
There may be five claims to ownership, but no-one doubts that the cash to purchase it came from the Zimbabwe Reserve Bank, or every Zimbabwean, as they might otherwise be known. ZimAirways, owned by the state, apparently supposed to be taking over the now virtually non-existent AirZim, might be the owner, or ZimAirways might be owned by diasporic Zimbabweans, not the state. Another version is that ZimAirways is now a locally held private company. Those locals appear to include the son-in-law of Robert Mugabe. The fourth possibility is that a company known as Zimbabwe Aviation Leasing owns it, via Mauritius. Finally, maybe the CFO of ZimAirways is the owner. He refuses to talk. The Cape Town registry might not be able to solve the local politics, but it will be definitive on who owns the aircraft and certainty is always a good thing.
So good is certainty that by Tuesday ACI Global was able to prove what we have been told for a long time now – the world is moving eastwards. The ACI’s most recent review of airport traffic showed quite clearly that the centre of gravity is moving towards Asia. Helping in that movement is that the low cost carriers in Europe, for the longest time the engine room of growth, change and disruption are now somewhere along the poacher – gamekeeper spectrum, but not at the poacher end. Talking at the ACI Economics conference, representatives of both Norwegian and Ryanair were increasingly comfortable with the IATA slot regulation, now that they have slots, thanks very much.
But the noise incumbency makes was being drowned out by the beating of the drums of a trade war. So with huge trepidation, the airport world looked to the office of the US Trade Representative as he released a ‘List of Countries Denying Fair Market Opportunities for Government-Funded Airport Construction Projects’ on Wednesday. At the time of the drafting of the US Constitution, German was considered as America’s national language. The every-noun-gets-a-capital obviously dates from then. So, on opening this list, sorry List, which Countries are in the frame? None. None. Now that was a let-down. Those that work on such projects report that they have to beg US firms to participate.
Thursday saw IATA make a bold dash into the zany acronyms arena. They have a new competition for start-up airlines ‘to recognise pioneering ideas in the area of passenger experience from start-up companies’. This is of course the GAPS award. As in ‘mind the gap’. It is short for Global Airports and Passenger Symposium. The single most innovative idea from the start-up airlines was ‘low fares’. It is a fascinating development. Is IATA attempting to colonise the start-up airlines, or yet again, are we on the poacher:gamekeeper interface?
The one interface that is not moving is Brexit. Willie Walsh has been Panglossianly telling everyone to keep calm and carry on, because magically, everything will turn out just fine, in this, the best of all possible worlds etc, but on Friday a Friday the 13th, the Commission assumed the role of the vulgar Bulgars, releasing a note explaining that after Brexit, the UK will not have access to Europe’s safety regulator, or regulations. The UK will have to find and rely on its own ‘competent authorities’.
