That Was The Week That Was: 30 April – 04 May
The week that was started with Brexit – which week does not? The European Parliament spent some time looking at Brexit and tourism last week. The CEO of the Europe Travel Operators’ Association stretched hard for his classical reference books to help explain what is classical only in the sense of being a classic stuff up. Brexit, Tom Jenkins said, is a Chimera, coming out of the blocks at high speed. True it is that Brexit is a fantastical idea, so Jenkins rounded the top corner determined to take gold. The big issue is jobs. Jobs and growth. The two big issues are jobs and growth… Jenkins would have gone on to say if he was a fan of Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition routine. Still, the Inquisition was a vein of classical reference worth further mining, at least in Jenkin’s mind. He pointed out the damage being done across Europe, both within the UK and without, by Brexit. It is in no-one’s national interest to pursue this Chimera, he said. Perhaps Brexit could be Deus ex Machina… As the great Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating once observed, in any fight between principle and self-interest, back self-interest, because you can be sure it is in there fighting. So Jenkin is on the right track. His error perhaps is to assume that there is a Deus anywhere near Brexit. It is hard to imagine a Machina less blessed with a Deus. It is a Machina Sine Deus. No Deus would want to be seen anywhere near it. But if there is to be a Deus in aviation, Dr Fang Liu of ICAO knows who it is to be: President Xi. Once, UN employees, on being appointed, were required to sign a pledge that they would not give preference to their home nation’s interests. On Tuesday Dr Liu spoke at Wuhan University. See if you can spot the pledge to not favour one’s home nation here: “…air transport has become established as a form of ‘sky silk road’ globally… and how with greater collaboration and assistance, for example through ICAO’s “No Country Left Behind” initiative, aviation can help many ‘Belt and Road’ States to achieve greater prosperity…”. The response, the outrage, was deafening only in its silence. On the other hand, you have to admire someone that tells China how important the rule of law is. We have remarked before about how important to your lobbying it is to have a compliant MEP in your pocket, to ask the relevant part of the Commission a question that highlights your issue. The Controllers’ unions have found their patsy in Francesc Gumbus a Spanish, or is that Catalonian centre-right MEP. He asked a question on Wednesday about just how put upon Spanish controllers are and how very poorly paid they are. Right. Thursday saw Brexit back on the agenda, if it ever left it, with Wizz Air announcing that it had now set up a UK operation. The ownership and control provisions are under increasing pressure as national interest pushes both sides to protect their investments. The ACI, in the meantime, released another study that suggests that airfares and airport charges are unrelated. What matters is competition at particular airports. All these strands came together by Friday with Norwegian, subject to a takeover bid from IAG saying that IAG has sent two offers and that other suitors are circling. If IAG where to acquire Norwegian, two airline groups, IAG and easyJet would have more than 80% of the slots at Gatwick. That would be a Dues in the Machina of airline competition.Trackback from your site.