CEOs on crack? This reads like a mash-up of MBA cliches with no substantive content.

What does he want, exactly?

It's like meta-Sarkozy - there's a lot of self-importance, drama and grand-standing, but I'm not seeing any specific suggestions to deal with anything much.

Bisignani

The forecast uses a consensus oil price of US$106.5 per barrel crude (Brent). This is a swing of US$6.8 billion from the previously forecasted  industry profit of US$4.5 billion that was announced in March and based on an average oil price of US$86 per barrel (Brent).

vs

Bisignani

For every dollar that the oil price increases, we add US$1.6 billion to costs. If we see US$135 oil for the rest of the year, losses could be US$6.1 billion,"

According to that last sentence costs should increase by more than $45 billion over the original estimate at $106.5/bl. But the new loss is $6 billion?

Is it too much to expect a CEO to produce numbers which add up without moving decimal points around for PR reasons?

Ah, a diary about aviation without a picture?

Here is a picture of one of the A-380 testplanes taken in Toulouse last weekend. It flew to Paris to be loaded with relief-material for Myanmar.

The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)

Excellent diary!

Where is the pyramid building industry today?
Where is the horse transport industry today?
Where are the tea or wheat schooners, the traction engines, the telex, the fax machines, the fixed line phones?

We will adapt to life without commercial flight. 32 million workers will need retraining. 80% of them can quickly move into service jobs in the expansion of other travel modes such as sea or rail. The 20% specialized staff - pilots, designers, mechanics etc will find it harder - pilots most of all.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Jordanian's Majali is New IATA Chairman   03 June 2008

...Majali noted that change must also involve governments.

"In the unexplored territory of astronomical fuel prices, the environment debate takes on a completely new dimension.

The incentive for airlines to improve performance has never been bigger, but governments stand in our way.

They must overcome their obsession with punitive and unilateral emissions trading schemes and start working on real solutions to reduce CO2. A Single European Sky is critical.

Equally important is the Agenda for Freedom.
To fight the many crises that beset this industry, we must liberalise.
Airlines need the same commercial freedoms that almost all other businesses enjoy to manage risk and grow our businesses into truly global enterprises," said Majali.
...

Ah...a new chairman.
He also forgot to explain who's freedom is involved in their'Agenda for Freedom'.

The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)

It looks like they want someone else pays the bills so they can keep the profits.

Just another symptom of advanced Anglo-disease.

keep to the Fen Causeway

we urge authorities to enforce the integrity of markets so that the cost of energy reflects its true value.

erm isn't it the integrity of the markets that's casing all the problems for you?

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

But their 6 point plan is confusing me. It looks like they want someone else pays the bills so they can keep the profits.

Even if you may have felt confused in the process, you clearly didn't end up confused.

They want someone else to pay the bills so they can keep the "profits" in an industry that on a full cost basis has never made a profit.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

• regulation of airlines is indeed a crazy nightmare. A lot of countries have nationality rules for airplanes flying specific routes; air traffic control is split along national borders with no overall coherence, which is indeed wasteful and dangerous;

• there is a lot of fuel wasted taxiing around airports, as well as cruising around them - some of that is due to airlines all wanting to land and take off at the same time, but some is due to airport and air traffic procedures;

• the need for the true cost of energy and nuisance indeed needs to be reflected (thus the need to include the sector in carbon emissions control schemes);

• playing with labor costs is not really conducive to safety; it is true that safety could be made predominantly the responsibility of the States rather than of the airlines, but I'm not sure the airlines would be so happy about that...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

The civilian aviation industry (the vulgarisation of the jet-set concept) was iirc launched by the Yanks in 1948 and later years, as a way to protect the aviation barons from having to tool down after the boom years of WWII.  (On the military side, the Soviet threat was vastly overinflated by US pols and spookmeisters to justify and subsidise the warplane industry.)  So it -- like the whole carburb build-out -- was an artificially-created industry to start with, heavily subsidised by government handouts throughout its short, hoggish life.  

Which means that no one has ever paid the true cost of their air travel -- the "nanny state" has offered it as one of the perks that are supposed to keep us worker ants loyal to the capitalist bosses.  And it has worked great.  I know more than one person whose instinctive response to carbon taxes, demand reduction, etc. is to squawk that they will give up all kinds of things, "but not air travel!  how can I go see my cousin's wedding, how can I make a weekend visit to my old Mum, how can my kids have their ski vacation in Aspen, without cheap air tickets???"  And the simple answer is "you can't / they can't."  It was only the fast-forward beanfest of supercheap fossil fuel that made the brief vulgarisation of jet travel possible, and that historical moment is over.  That was then, this is now.

Although I understand the appeal of cheap quick travel, and I feel some of the same panic at the thought of "narrowing our horizons" -- can we look around us and say honestly that the migration of bazillions of tourists and biz-jin all over the planet at lickety-split speed has, actually, created a more cosmopolitan, tolerant, culturally respectful international community?  Seems like what it has really created is the destruction of local cultures, the proliferation of cookie-cutter corporate hotels and pseudo-ritzy resorts, franchise food outlets, etc. -- not to mention contributing to climate destabilisation, pollution of air and water, noise pollution (which has far more serious health consequences than one might think), more rapid spread of epidemics, etc. -- and then too, it's just one more reason to bomb Iraq and Iran and steal the oil.  Does cheap air travel really broaden the mind, or is the "instant/convenient/ubiquitous" meme (so deeply embedded in it) far more powerful than any exposure to foreigners and foreign ways?  Hasn't it made "the rest of the world" just something else to consume, in 3day, 4day, 5day, etc. packaged tours?  I wonder.  Television was going to bring "culture and the arts" into every home and make us all educated and Enlightened and smart; and look how that turned out.  Cheap air travel was going to broaden our minds and help us to become respectful/conscious citizens of the global village, but has it?

Personally, I could care less if the aviation industry shoots self in foot and falls out of its tree.  Its time has come, writing's on the wall.  Bring back passenger rail, sez I.  OK, I have to admit the views were really nice from up there, but maybe we could still do something with dirigibles at an energy cost that would be semi-sane...

Sigh... and to think that as a kid, I loved airports...

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...