A cornucopia of news, opinion, views, facts and quirky bits that need to be talked about. Join our community and join in the conversation on all matters aviation. The blog includes our weekly round-up of the bits of European aviation you may otherwise have missed – That Was The Week That Was
Last week, you may recall, we discussed the concept of airlines creating the random holiday generator, a lucky dip scheme that sends you on a holiday to the destination of their choice. Not to be outdone, the Air France entry in the legacy lower-cost long-haul stakes, Joon, has its own product that in effect crowdsources holidays. On Monday it launched another innovative product. We were promised innovation at Joon, and here it is. In this scheme, friends get together and create a kitty of funds to send one of the group on a holiday. It is called PaperPlane. Ask yourself, which friend do you have that you want to make sure leaves on a holiday without you? Given the situation at Air France, it is difficult not to see other reasons why it is looking into ways to crowdsource funds…
It is not totally clear from the press release exactly how this works, but at least and at last, on the GDPR, which has created a certain amount of uncertainty, help is at hand. On Tuesday a reader sent his wonderful shot of a slide from the good people at the European Data Protection Board, who have explained the process. It is simple really, nothing more than a one stop shop…
It is to be hoped that this clears things up for you.
By Wednesday, EBACE, Europe’s business aviation exhibition was in full swing in Geneva. Suppliers, operators and manufacturers were falling over each other to announce changes and improvements. EBACE is always worth a visit, if only to see the permanent dichotomy of trying to prove that business aviation is a tool for business and a force for good, whilst setting up stands and selling by appealing to the luxury and glamour involved.
But the habit of calling something what it is not, or at least renaming something we already know, reached new heights on Thursday when a Finnish research group announced that they were looking at a smart logistics corridor as a service. This will apparently be environmentally friendly and wonderful in so many ways. The ‘this’ in that sentence, the corridor as a service, is perhaps better known as ‘a road’. Which seems like a good moment to also talk about Arrivo, a start-up which is trying to push its idea that much of the road space is currently wasted. Even in heavy traffic, only 15% of the road is actually occupied. Their proposal then is to place the cars in frames and move the road, not the cars through corridors on a mag-lev platform. Simple really…
By Friday, airline executives from around the world were starting their journey to Sydney for IATA’s AGM, or as the IATA press machine put it – Sydney will be the centre of world aviation. That can only beg one question: where is the centre normally?
It is to be hoped that this clears things up for you.
By Wednesday, EBACE, Europe’s business aviation exhibition was in full swing in Geneva. Suppliers, operators and manufacturers were falling over each other to announce changes and improvements. EBACE is always worth a visit, if only to see the permanent dichotomy of trying to prove that business aviation is a tool for business and a force for good, whilst setting up stands and selling by appealing to the luxury and glamour involved.
But the habit of calling something what it is not, or at least renaming something we already know, reached new heights on Thursday when a Finnish research group announced that they were looking at a smart logistics corridor as a service. This will apparently be environmentally friendly and wonderful in so many ways. The ‘this’ in that sentence, the corridor as a service, is perhaps better known as ‘a road’. Which seems like a good moment to also talk about Arrivo, a start-up which is trying to push its idea that much of the road space is currently wasted. Even in heavy traffic, only 15% of the road is actually occupied. Their proposal then is to place the cars in frames and move the road, not the cars through corridors on a mag-lev platform. Simple really…
By Friday, airline executives from around the world were starting their journey to Sydney for IATA’s AGM, or as the IATA press machine put it – Sydney will be the centre of world aviation. That can only beg one question: where is the centre normally?