Towards an impasse

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As every year, the ranking of the best airlines in the world carried out by the London-based Skytrax organization is closely scrutinized. It must be said that this rating is not disputed by anyone and that it has been refined over time, since it began in 1999, a quarter of a century ago. This is more than enough to ensure its credibility. A few lessons remain to be learned.

First of all, the supremacy of the Gulf airlines, to which we can add Turkish Airlines, whose base in Istanbul is in the same geographical area. Well, this zone, which includes only about twenty regular companies out of the 1200 registered in the world, achieves the performance of placing 3 in the top ten places and 5 in the Top 20. We can also notice the great stability in this ranking since we find the same in 2023. Let us pay tribute to Qatar Airways, Emirates and Turkish Airlines, the latter of which has made tremendous progress in the last 10 years

American airlines, yet the giants of air transport, are conspicuous by their absence. No carrier appears in the top 20 and only 3 emerge in the list of 50, with the first Delta Air Lines in the modest 21st place. It was not until the 100 nominees were nominated that 14 carriers registered in the United States and Canada were found. This proves that just because a company is big doesn’t mean it’s beautiful and attractive. Admittedly, the American domestic market is undoubtedly less demanding than that of other continents, but it is still surprising that the mega carriers of the United States still manage to impose themselves in international competition while their quality of service leaves so much to be desired.

The Asian continent takes the lion’s share of this ranking. It represents half of the top 10 companies and almost as many of the top 50: 24 out of 50. On closer inspection, the carriers of this huge continent have imposed a level of quality much higher than that of other parts of the world, but they are also the ones who will drive the growth of future air transport if we are to believe the huge order book they hold with the two major world manufacturers. For the moment, states do not seem to be very concerned by the search for carbon neutrality, they are rather in the position of using this mode of transport to strengthen their economic growth.

European airlines are gradually regaining ground. It must be said that they had fallen very low under the governance of the famous “cost killers” and “Yield Management”. Gradually we see them return to the places they should never have left. Let’s welcome the arrival of Air France for the second year in a row and Swiss International Airlines in the top 10 airlines. The Europeans managed to place 6 carriers in the Top 20 with the progress of British Airways and Lufthansa. This proves that when Europeans want to make a quality product, they quickly reach the top of the ranking. They had to go down very low before returning to the level they had in the 1970s. We can only encourage them to continue on the same path.

Two continents are still lagging behind. Latin America only appears in the second part of the Top 50 with the 43rd position of LATAM and only 5 carriers are in the top 100 worldwide. There is still much to be done in this area for which air transport is so vital. The same can be said of Africa, which only places Ethiopian Airlines in the top 50 carriers in 36th place and only 7 companies in the top 100, including Royal Air Maroc in 55th place.

We can criticize this type of ranking at will, which necessarily retains a certain subjectivity even if it is built on a large number of criteria. Nevertheless, it is of great interest not only to high-rated companies or those that are moving up the list, but also to customers for whom it remains a criterion of choice, even if it is not the only one. And then it encourages carriers to continue their efforts to improve and, if only for that, the Skytrax ranking is very useful to air transport.

Air transport is 80 years old

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This is false, you will tell me, and you will be right. The first commercial flight took place in Florida in… 1914 and before the Second World War, major companies such as Pan Am, Air France, Imperial Airways, and others were already crisscrossing the skies and had traced important international networks. Pan Am, for example, crossed the Pacific with giant seaplanes, and European operators went as far as Australia and many Asian and African countries. So why date air transport to 1944?

On December 7, 1944, in Chicago, the representatives of 52 countries signed the real renaissance of air transport by laying down the rules that would make it prosperous. This required the creation of an entity responsible for the development of regulations and their enforcement. To tell the truth, the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) only took its current title on April 4, 1947, after the ratification of the majority of the founding countries, i.e., 26, since decisions are taken by a simple majority.

To be honest, I’m still surprised by the vision of the founders. Let us remember that in December 1944, the world was really on fire. The war had reached a savagery never known in the past, and little by little, the alliance against the totalitarian countries—Germany, Japan, and their affiliates—was gaining the upper hand. At that point, there was no longer any doubt as to the winners. However, the members of this constituent assembly have laid down as a principle of future air transport that it will be managed with the same rules in each signatory country and that they will apply even to defeated countries. It was not easy, and it is the greatness of the participants in the creation of ICAO, to have understood the importance of air transport for the recovery of the planet and its future prosperity.

To date, 193 countries are members of ICAO, the same number as the participants in the UN. They are represented in this body by an ambassador. That is to say that air transport has a global governance that works rather well despite the low number of permanent civil servants, around 1,000. Many other international organizations would do well to adopt a similar system of governance.

This works well because the ICAO has mandated each of the member states to apply the rules laid down by the organization. But the Civil Aviation Directorates of each state are themselves audited by delegates from the head office, and if the inspection shows significant dysfunctions, the country in question is simply removed from the ICAO until its inspection shows that it has returned to good practices. This means that “blacklisted” countries can no longer issue navigation certificates to their airlines and that the latter can no longer operate international flights. This is probably the best way to avoid the effects of corruption that would have the effect of reducing the security of the airlines of these states. Several countries have been in such a position in the past, such as Nigeria and the Philippines. This has forced the governments concerned to review the entire organization of their own civil aviation. They did so and once again joined global air travel.

Let us keep in mind that this unique system has allowed a fantastic development of world trade while forcing air transport to become safer and more environmentally friendly. In 1983, the ICAO created a Committee for the Protection of the Environment. As a result of the standards enacted, aircraft noise has decreased by 75% since 1970 and fuel consumption by 80%. Admittedly, it seems difficult, if not impossible, to achieve carbon neutrality by 2025, which is the objective of global air transport, but the constant pressure put on all players will certainly have a very beneficial effect on the ecological impact of this sector of activity.

The ICAO only issues standards for all aspects of air transport, from radio frequencies and the standardization of diplomas to major safety rules, and they apply to all players: from manufacturers to airports and, of course, carriers. It may not seem like much, but it is thanks to these standards that air transport has reached an incomparable level of development while improving its safety to the point where we are approaching excellence.

Happy birthday to ICAO and happy birthday to modern air transport. May it continue for a long time in the same way.

Air transport, stop punitive ecology!

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It’s a done deal: the total decarbonisation of air transport by 2050 will not be possible. Indeed, the 14,000 or so aircraft currently on order will be delivered between 2025 and 2035 and they have a lifespan of at least 30 years. However, they are built with a technology that still generates CO² and the production of SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel) will be largely insufficient to ensure carbon-free air transport.

Is this a reason to do nothing? Certainly not. The airline industry has been tackling the problem head-on for at least a good twenty years. Today’s aircraft are much less fuel-hungry and less energy-intensive. Despite the cries of outrage from some apostles of ecology, air transport has not waited for them to work on this issue, if only because it is profitable. The less fossil fuel the appliances consume, the more profitable the sector is.

But the ecological revolution will not happen with a wave of a magic wand. Several hundred billion dollars will have to be devoted to research, and it will have to cover the entire spectrum of this activity. And first of all, the manufacture of engines, because this is the major factor of pollution. Designing new machines that consume very little fuel is a long-term task. Imagining new systems to provide sufficient power for the take-off of 400-tonne aircraft is not currently conceivable, at least in the current state of research. And it will also be necessary to gain in decarbonization in the assembly of aircraft, but also – and this is undoubtedly the first progress to be made in the reorganization of airspace in order to shorten distances and consequently travel times. Much remains to be done in this area and we know, at least in Europe, how to proceed with the implementation of SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research), in other words, the management of European airspace in a single entity and not fragmented into 43 control centres as is the case now. Everything is ready, all that remains is to convince the states and the air traffic controllers’ unions and this is perhaps the most difficult.

In short, we will have to put money, a lot of money into research. The subject is exciting. Creating carbon-free aviation is great, especially since air transport is essential to the survival of the planet and the prosperity of peoples. So why does he have to suffer the vindictiveness of political leaders? The latter, at least in some European countries, including France in the first place, but this is also the case in the Netherlands, Germany and even in the Nordic countries, are determined to put the brakes on airlines and, when this is not possible, to tax the air sector in favour of land transport. I am thinking mainly of rail transport. Do we seriously believe that subsidizing the train by taking money from the plane is the right solution to bring air transport to be decarbonized? How can we reasonably divert a so-called Chirac tax, the purpose of which was to provide the means to vaccinate the populations that are in dire need of it, to the benefit of a general budget that no one seems to be able to control anymore?

What kind of jealousy or demagogy drives the deputies to tax the users of the plane on the pretext that they must be able to pay? Of course, the enormous financial needs necessary for research will have to be paid for by someone, and it will certainly not be the states that will always have other priorities. So, of course, these hundreds of billions of dollars will inevitably have to be provided by air transport itself, and first and foremost by consumers. But everyone will have to get involved, whether it’s passengers, manufacturers, engine manufacturers and even airports. And instead of working in a dispersed manner, it would be wise for the collection of money to be centralized with a global organization, why not the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) which could set the main lines of research and distribute the necessary funds in a balanced way with a single goal: the decarbonization of global air transport.

We should listen more often to Bertrand Piccard, the founder and director of Solar Impulse. He talks about the future without blaming the present. He talks about real technological leaps that are not only the improvement of current processes but real innovations, which means that we don’t know about them nowadays. For him, ecology is not a constraint but a real progress that cannot be achieved by destroying the present. I can well imagine him at the head of the huge investment fund that I ardently hope will be created.