Air Berlin Article
Aviation expert Andrew Charlton explains why Air Berlin needs money and why Etihad would like to invest more. And he says what here are the problems.
Link to Air Berlin ArticleGiles here the docment is missing.
Wall Street Journal
Emirates Boosts Dubai’s Trade, Tourism Hub Credentials
Aviation analysts say it is common sense for new routes to spur trade. “History is clear,” explained Andrew Charlton, an analyst at Aviation Advocacy. “When the Romans built roads, the trade around the empire improved.”
Link to Wall Street JournalBig Data Meets Big Airline
In a month not without news, from Syria to Grand Slam tennis, the single most interesting piece of news was almost little more than a throw-away remark by the still-on-a-charm-offensive Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline. In an interview with the Irish Independent newspaper he let slip that Ryanair was working with Google. It was a deliberate slip, one to scare the competition.
They should be scared. Very scared. It will ‘change the way people buy tickets forever’, said Mr O’Leary, in his new charming way. Finally, letting his inner street fighter out, he then said that it would ‘blow everyone else out of the water.’
Aviation Advocacy says “ we don’t think there is any doubt that Google will be cheaper than the GDS for the airlines, but even if it is the same cost, which airline can afford to ignore Google? When was the last time you had a Google-free day?” The Aviation Intelligence Reporter, which Aviation Advocacy publishes each month wrote about this at some length in Febuary 2014 edition.
To see full article click here: Subscribe to todayAA in the wires – New South Wales Law Society Journal
A tale of two flight decks
One More Sunrise, Mike Collins, FastPrint Publishing
reviewed by Andrew CharltonSince the Wright brothers’ first flight, total airline losses have exceeded profits. And when airline profits have been made, they have tended to be razor-thin. Airline managers used to get away with this because plane travel had an aura of glamour and romance. The public’s vision of flying embodied daring and magnificent men in their flying machines.
But those days are gone. The realisation has dawned: airlines are businesses. They are expected to make money for their shareholders. Just ask Qantas chief executive officer Alan Joyce. However, some pilots sitting at the controls of their flying machines resist this reality. They are sure the ‘bean counters’ and ‘paper wallahs’ at HQ are deliberately ruining their fun. This is the view of retired Qantas captain Mike Collins in his self-published book, One More Sunrise.
Collins is right about one thing: bean counters and paper wallahs view modern airlines as network businesses, not play things. For them it’s business as usual to delay particular flights and increase waiting times on certain sectors so the entire network can operate optimally.
However, in the book, Collins is only interested in getting to his destination as soon as possible, even if it means gaming air traffic controllers, other pilots and procedures or taking calculated risks. He describes examples of this, such as ignoring wind warnings so he can land when an airport is about to be closed. He thinks he is alive to tell us about his exploits because of his superior flying skills. He can only see his flight, not the interests of the airline.
Collins longs for the ‘good old days’ when pilots operated planes that required ‘real flying’ skills, not advanced computing. But most passengers do not have the same longing. We do not want ‘artisans’ lovingly carrying us across the skies in hand-made, hand-crafted flights. We want cheap, efficient, mass produced aviation that carries us conveniently, safely and profitably. We may think we want artisan aviation, but we vote for the opposite with our wallets every day.
This book demonstrates the problems that self-publishing implies. Reading it is like being trapped on a flight deck and being lectured to about the good old days and how management knows nothing. Some pilots may think they can do better than management, but few pilots write about it so self-assuredly and poorly as Collins. If you can wade through it, you might find the typos amusing.
The book makes a telling point about modern network aviation – but not the point the author is trying to convey.
AA quoted in Airport Policy News
Airport Policy and Security News #97
“European airport capacity is like the statistician standing with one foot in a bucket of boiling water and one on a block of ice; on average, he feels fine. Europe has both an airport capacity crunch and a capacity surplus at the same time. We have lots of airports, just not where we need them. To argue that the State Aid rules help with the capacity crunch because you just never know when that white elephant airport might come in handy is disingenuous, to say the least.”
—Andrew Charlton, “State Aid and Airports: Pork Barrel Meets Sausage Machine,” Aviation Intelligence Reporter, October 2013 Link Airport Policy NewsEstablishing an effective regional body in the Middle East
Aviation already comprises more than a quarter of Dubai’s gross domestic product, some $22 billion a year. Much of that comes from Al Maktoum’s older sister Dubai International Airport – the fourth busiest airport in the world serving in 2012 around 57 million passengers. Even so that airport is expected to reach its full capacity of 90 million passengers by 2020 and so the new airport is an attempt to retain Dubai’s edge in the market.
Capacity
Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths speaking at the inauguration of the new passenger terminal said that while there were no plans to close Dubai International, the decision would be ultimately determined by airspace capacity.
The issue of airspace capacity is becoming a critical factor in the region’s aviation ambitions. Forecast to be one of the fastest growing regions, while investment in airports has met the immediate demands of fast growing airlines, the capacity of its fragmented airspace has not grown at the same rate and is fast becoming a constraint to growth.
In an attempt to address this, the Middle Eastern membership of the Civil Air Navigation Service Organisation (CANSO) formed a working group which in 2010 established the MIDRAR project to offer some short, medium and long-term airspace improvements.
Working closely with ICAO and supported by many of the region’s air navigation service providers, the International Air Transport Association and airspace users, the project used passenger and traffic growth forecasts, data from previous regional studies and national plans, and input directly from stakeholders, to identify the most pressing operational challenges which could realistically be resolved through regional cooperation.
Response
Although its geographical scope deliberately extended beyond the CANSO membership to include the FIRs of Bahrain, Cairo, Amman, Muscat, Jeddah, Damascus, UAE and Kuwait, the exercise proved that there are no easy solutions to establishing a regional response to those airspace challenges. Each practical initiative that MIDRAR proposed would require the vital commitment of individual states supported by a regional co-ordinating effort. The fact is that the complexity of the airspace environment in the Middle East reflects the region’s varied geopolitical structure – and therein lies the rub.
Alan Corner of UK air transport consultancy Helios which worked on the project says cost also emerged as an issue, especially within those states that may be asked to fund work that while delivering benefits to the region as a whole would not immediately be of any use to them. “And, set against the context of growing demand, these practical but fairly unambitious solutions might, on their own, not prove enough to satisfy the airspace users,” he adds.
Middle East airspace is, after all, becoming increasingly recognised as an important resource, especially for airlines transporting passengers and cargo to and between Africa, Europe and the Asia-Pacific. The unprecedented capacity crunch threatens to restrict future growth and limit the region’s economic development.
Corner says that while individual states have introduced measures to improve their own efficiency and are progressively doing more bilaterally to address specific issues such as between the UAE, Bahrain and Oman, without better cooperation and the development of a regional approach, future airspace capacity is unlikely to meet the growing demand of those airspace users.
Concept
John Swift, regional managing director for UK air navigation service provider NATS, which has been operating in the Middle East for the last eight years, says the concept of a regional solution is essential.
“Many of the issues being faced by Gulf Cooperation Council states cannot be completely addressed within their own borders. If one state invests heavily in new systems and training to raise the capacity of its airspace, it will not fully achieve the benefits unless enhancements are coordinated with its neighbours.
“The first challenge for such a concept is for all stakeholders to acknowledge that a regional solution is required, and identify the appropriate body to co-ordinate activities, integrating the master plans of individual states and identifying efficiencies and quick wins,” says Swift who adds “The biggest challenge to this concept is that there is not enough open debate about the possibilities, or recognition of the economic benefits that would flow to all the states involved in such an initiative.”
While global aviation’s sovereign body ICAO engages with all Middle Eastern states and coordinates at policy level, an alternative forum to coordinate and support the implementation of regional airspace activities emerged three years ago in the form of MEAUSE or ‘Middle East Air Navigation Service Provider, Airspace User & Stakeholder Engagement ‘ which CANSO hopes will become the focal point for developing solutions.
MEAUSE
Launched as a CANSO working group, MEAUSE has evolved to become a mechanism to facilitate addressing the acute imbalance between traffic growth and airspace capacity.
Its first tentative steps were taken to create an understanding – at the most basic level – about the need for cooperation if the region is to survive explosive traffic growth and maintain the economic benefits aviation has brought. Much of the early focus has been on the fundamentals of ‘customer relationships’, signalling the realities of historically disjointed relationships between the various stakeholders.
Even so, ICAO which maintains an office n the region has a potentially stronger role to play supporting developments in the region – recognised by the fact that ICAO has been commissioned to establish a Middle East Air Space Enhancement Programme, which will consider the findings of the MIDRAR project along with other options, but under ICAO’s Middle East regional structure.
“ICAO is a good vehicle because everyone recognises it – they are all contracted states. At the same time, CANSO is successful at providing a non-state-level platform where different stakeholders can engage,” says Corner.
ProSky
The issue over whether national initiatives can really be implemented in parallel with the broader region’s needs was perhaps most recently highlighted by the recent completion of the UAE’s airspace and air traffic management system study jointly with Airbus ProSky in its quest to create ‘a sustainable aviation system’.
“General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) is committed to making the difficult choices and putting forth effort to realise our ATM Strategic Plan for 2030,” says Ahmed Al Jallaf, GCAA executive director of air navigation services. “This study has produced extremely important research allowing us to be the Middle East ATM leader and set examples for other regions,” he adds.
While the study is crucial to ensure the UAE’s airspace structure and ATM system will be able to handle traffic growth, beyond the remedies the report’s 53 recommendations offer, the question remains: how will the UAE’s work be integrated with regional needs?
Rivalries will undoubtedly persist but at least the Middle East can draw on the growing number of examples from around the world where co-operation has delivered tangible improvements to airspace efficiency and capacity.
Single Sky
As CANSO’s Salem Al–Jahdli points out: “In much the same way that fragmentation forced the European region to adopt its ambitious Single European Sky initiative, the Middle East is recognising that its own fragmentation is creating safety, efficiency and capacity challenges for the region that can only be effectively tackled through cooperation and planning.”
Corner agrees. “The Middle East is different, but there is nothing to suggest that much of what is being done in other regions could not also be implemented in the Middle East. Regulators, ANSPs and airspace users now routinely engage in various regional fora, including MEAUSE, and there are a number of local initiatives such as the A-CDM trial in Jeddah and the Emirates FLOW project in Dubai, which have the potential to be expanded further in the future.”
AA quoted in Wall Street Journal
F.C.C. to Weigh Allowing Cellphone Use on Flights
If the airlines were to offer cellular service, wireless carriers would likely negotiate roaming rates with companies like Gogo, which would then transmit signals to cell towers on the ground, said Andrew Charlton, chief executive of Aviation Advocacy, an airline consulting firm based in Switzerland.
Link to Wall Street JournalGiles, Link not working
AA quoted in The Economist
Very large planes – Airbus’s big bet
THE new venue for Dubai’s international air show, which opened on November 17th, is yet another testament to the ambitions of the tiny Gulf state. Al Maktoum airport, when fully operational in 2027, will handle 160m passengers a year on five runways. And it will operate in tandem with Dubai’s older airport, which is closer to its centre and currently welcomes 60m travellers a year. The punt on continued growth in demand is also reflected in the big orders for new planes that the region’s airlines announced at this week’s show.
Link to The EconomistAA quoted in Airport Policy News
Airport Policy and Security News #95
“When the lingua franca of Europe was Latin, commentators remarked on just how complex Europe was to govern. Nothing has changed. However, today the lingua franca is [European] Commission bureaucratese. Of all the complex bits of European governance, one of the most complex and difficult to explain has to be the prohibition on State Aid. No other country or region has rules that prohibit State Aid. Indeed, most countries look at ways to hand out largesse. Every trade association has entire departments devoted to begging for State Aid or distributing it once it arrives. Europe, as we so often see, is different. Europe’s rules prohibit handing out State Aid if it distorts any market. Given that the point of State Aid is to distort markets, that just about covers the field.”
-Andrew Charlton, “State Aid and Airports: Pork Barrel Meets Sausage Machine,” Aviation Intelligence Reporter, October 2013
Link to Airport Policy News