The Fragilities of Air Transport
What better recognition of air travel than its success and steady growth since its revival at the end of the Second World War. It has reached 5 billion passengers, $1,000 billion in revenue, around 20,000 aircraft in service, and each new version is more efficient than the previous one, and the outlook is still optimistic despite the many obstacles along the way.
During his speech to the BAR (Board of Airline Representatives) of France, Willie Walsh, the Director General of IATA, pointed out the difficulties that this sector of activity has to face, difficulties that could be overcome with a little goodwill.
A very complex supply chain that is difficult to control.
Aircraft are becoming more and more complex and yet they must be more and more secure. And it is not easy. Indeed, to achieve excellence, you have to call on a multitude of partners, each one a specialist in his or her field. An aircraft manufacturer cannot afford to bring together all the skills in its workshops. He is an architect and a final assembler before delivery to operators. For example, the wings of the Airbus A220, whose program was taken over from the Canadian company Bombardier, were bought from the American company Spirit AeroSystems, which had them manufactured in Ireland. This does not mean that the device is unreliable, quite the contrary. Each of the subcontractors is an expert in its field. However, it may turn out that some defects pass through the controls, which are very numerous. This is what happened to a Boeing 737 operated by Alaska Airlines that lost a fuselage panel in flight. The defect in the assembly of the door was identified at Spirit AeroSystems, which supplied the fuselages to Boeing. However, no fewer than nine checks were carried out on this cell, both by the manufacturer and the operator. Thus, despite the best goodwill in the world and the assistance of the latest technology, a simple forgotten bolt can lead to serious consequences.
European air traffic control needs to be rebuilt.
This is Europe’s default. This small continent, if we consider only its surface, is also divided into about thirty states, each of which is master of its airspace and consequently of its control tools. However, it is enough for one of the control centers to fail for technical or social reasons to disrupt the entire European aeronautical operation. Willie Walsh estimates that the losses caused by flight delays due to air traffic control will be 16 billion euros in 2025. France and the repeated strikes of its air traffic controllers are being blamed. Of course, we could unify the management of the European skies, but each country is reluctant and each government is afraid of social conflicts. In other words, we know how to do it. The SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) program has been ready for years and we are doing nothing. However, the most serious estimates show that this would save 8 minutes of flight time on each trip. We expect the ecologists, who are so effective in their lobbying, to support this project with their governments.
Punitive taxation.
How else can we explain this avalanche of taxes that hit air transport. We can see populism showing up behind all these measures taken in general under the pretext of penalizing an activity that is a source of CO₂ production, by directing the large levies not to carry out research that could lead air transport toward zero carbon impact, but by drowning them in general budgets when it is not just to subsidize rail transport. And I am not talking about the delusions of which private flights are the target under the pretext that they are used by privileged people, when in reality the vast majority of them are used to develop economic activities.
An airport route to be rethought.
Willie Walsh did not mention this aspect in his speech, but let us recognize that it is a great source of frustration for passengers. Of course, safety is a major aspect of all public transport. But this concern should apply to all means of transport, including rail or road. This is not the case, and yet attacks have also hit rail transport without security checks being applied in stations, if only because we do not know how to do it. One thing is certain, however. The difficulty of getting to and through airports is one of the reasons for the transfer of a large number of air transport customers to trains, or even cars, for distances of less than 800 km.
Decarbonization requires the use of a new fuel, SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel), but this is difficult to produce and very expensive, probably because of its scarcity. This is another obstacle that air travel is facing, and I am not talking about cybersecurity, which will certainly become a major concern in the coming years.
Good luck!
