As of March 5, according to new International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) rules, English proficiency is now be the required of all pilots and air traffic controllers. In the past, controllers and pilots could communicate in a local language if both spoke it, even though English was the most common standard. More than anything else, [...]
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Air traffic control commercialization can change the incentives in the ATC system, Eugene Hoeven (pictured at right) said during a panel discussion last Wednesday, leading to dramatic improvements in the industry. Hoeven, the director for ICAO affairs of the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO), the trade association for air naviation service providers (ANSP), spoke [...]
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The Guardian reports that the U.S. government is circulating a memo and beginning negotiations in Europe to intensify security measures:
Airlines would be required to give passengers’ personal data to the Transportation Security Administration even for flights merely overflying the United States.
Travelers from countries in Europe for which the United States waives visas would be required [...]
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Patrick Smith’s column this week is a delightful meditation on “country-bagging” in which he argues that one does not count having visited a country without leaving an airport or train station for at least a few hours and seeing the place. In this situation, I am a strict constructionist of borders: pass through one, and [...]
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The Chinese were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of jumbo jets danced in their heads.
China, not stopping with its forthcoming small-to-medium-size civilian jetliner, is moving forward with its jumbo jet program. Its two state-run and owned aerospace companies, AVIC I and AVIC II, will be restructured. AVIC I (an acronym for China Aviation [...]
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Posted in Evan's Debates, tagged aerospace, asia, competition, europe, green, nationalism, open skies, prestige, regulation, usa, world on December 12, 2007 | No Comments »
My exchange with Daniel Hall earlier this week made it onto The Economist’s Free Exchange, which was in turn picked up by Megan McArdle’s Asymmetrical Information.
The Economist writer brings in the intervention dimension:
[S]o politicised an industry as air travel need not fear dislocations in any case; governments would react incredibly quickly to pull back on [...]
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Well, I’m back from a little-longer-than-usual Thanksgiving break. My day job has been busy and I have a couple of side editing projects that have been butting into my blogging time. But I was rousted from my bloggy slumber by this piece of non-news from Reuters:
New pact could shake up airlines: Barron’s
New pact? Why, what [...]
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The Cranky Flier draws attention to a little-noticed aspect of this past weekend’s end of daylight savings time: its effects on airline schedules. Normally airlines deal with these sorts of things by making necessary adjustments (especially complicated, he says, for flights between the northern and southern hemisphere, where daylight savings is going on when it’s [...]
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I mean, I expect this from Michael O’Leary . . .
“Don’t talk to me about global warming… I just do not buy it whatsoever,” Maurice Flanagan, Emirates executive vice chairman, said at a regional aviation conference in Singapore.
“Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ is absolute rubbish,” added Flanagan, who said he had watched the documentary three times.
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Posted in Evan's Fiskings, tagged aerospace, air traffic control, airports, competition, delays, network airlines, regulation, security, travel, usa, world on October 30, 2007 | No Comments »
Irwin Stelzer, a very intelligent commentator on economic issues, indulges too much air rage in his latest column. After running through a laundry list of typical air travel complaints, he reveals that his understanding of air traffic control funding, for example, is shaky:
Now consider the world’s airlines’ roles in all of this. They have by [...]
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