Skip to content

Aviation’s another thing he doesn’t understand then

The FT quite appropriately notes the big issues facing airlines after Brexit this morning. Put bluntly, no one knows whether UK based aircraft will be permitted to fly into EU airports after 30 March 2019, and if they are on what routes they will be permitted to fly.

Err, no, not really.

Some of us have noted that before the EU, before the EC and even before the EEC, planes would take off from British airports and land at continental ones smelling funnily of garlic and boiled sausage. Even, that flights depart from the UK each and every day to places which are not part of the EU.

But there is another much more relevant and immediate question to also address. If any restrictions are likely, and I think they are, then why is it that we still need a new runway at Heathrow? It seems to me that Brexit has completely shot the case for that. We are not going to be the gateway to Europe now, and never will be again. And what is more, we may not even have the flights to make the links.

I would seriously suggest it’s time to scrap plans for Heathrow’s expansion. We’re just not going to need it.

Well done, leap to unwarranted conclusion based on not understanding reality.

The concern is actually over cabotage rights. The ability for a British airline to pick up a passenger in, say, Leipzig and deliver them to Faro without going anywhere near the UK. And we already know how they’re going to deal with this, set up within EU subsidiaries.

16 thoughts on “Aviation’s another thing he doesn’t understand then”

  1. And while we are on the subject, let’s nip in the bud the one about the EU-US Open Skied Agreement, which will cease to apply to the UK when we are no longer a member state. Fact is the UK and the US had an open skies agreement in place for years, updated regularly, last time in 2007. Wouldn’t take 2 minutes to print that out and sign it again.

  2. Also, while we are about it, the major issue is that by leaving the EU, the UK falls out of the European Common Aviation Area, but that is simply remedied by signing up to the ECAA in our own name, just like Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Tunisia, Morocco, Ukraine, all the non-EU Baltic states, Israel, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

    If Albania is good enough, then the UK is probably a fit and proper candidate.

  3. Cabitage agreements are reciprocal.

    If UK planes cannot land in EU Countries, EU planes cannot land in the UK.

    Why would EU Countries want to do that?

  4. No, cabotage isn’t landing rights in each country. It’s the right to fly from a third country to another third country. The EU is rather larger as an internal market than the UK….

  5. Most of them don’t even need to create subsidiaries. Ryanair is (of course) HQ in Dublin. BA is a subsidiary of IAG, which also owns Iberia. I’m not sure about eJ, but they fly lots of aircraft that aren’t on the UK register, so I guess they have subsidiaries already.

  6. EasyJet is a UK group, but as it is largely owned by a Cypriot/UK dual national it probably qualifies as an EU based airline.

  7. To my mind, this exposes the EU for what it is, a nasty protectionist racket. How would it be if we banned Lidl and Aldi from the UK because they are not British-based and British owned? That would hurt both the store groups and consumers.

    So why apply it to airlines?

    It is thisnasty fundamental nationalist “little European” ideology, which I think has become incapable of reform, which makes me a Brexiteer.

  8. “Nautical Nick
    April 14, 2017 at 5:35 pm
    To my mind, this exposes the EU for what it is, a nasty protectionist racket.”

    That’s a view. Another view is that aviation is a heavily regulated industry – for good reason, and the EU is simply allowing access to airlines that fly under the flags of the member states and are regulated by their aviation authorities.

  9. Related to flights from UK to what is now EU before EC existed & before we joined EC

    Until Airbus, most of the aeroplanes flown by EU countries (exc former USSR) were British or American powered by British or American engines.

    DJT isn’t an EU fan – perhaps RR, GE and P&W could refuse to sell engines to EU on security grounds – Mad Merkel’s importing RoP nutters and her love-in with Putin.

  10. Alex,

    Both views are correct and yours is not the opposite of N.Nick’s.

    Yes, aviation is a heavily regulated industry. Under these regulations, the EU deems RwandAir safe enough to fly from Kigali to Brussels.

    The EU is also a protectionist racket. Under this protectionism, RwandAir, not being an EU airline, is not permitted to fly from Paris to Frankfurt unless the flight continues to Kigali.

    This problem was never going to affect BA, as 99% of their routes start and end in London; it is routes such as easyJet’s Prague to Naples that may no longer be allowed, if easyJet is deemed to be a non-EU airline.

    Sure, the UK will need to establish a new aviation agreement with the EU, but as an existing member, it already meets all the standards. The point is that by leaving the EU, the UK no longer has automatic access to the intra-European flight market unless a new agreement is created.

  11. @ Alex: “That’s a view. Another view is that aviation is a heavily regulated industry – for good reason, and the EU is simply allowing access to airlines that fly under the flags of the member states and are regulated by their aviation authorities.”

    A moment’s thought would, ISTM, show this is bollox. The location of the head office and principal shareholders is not a safety issue; the aircraft is. Under the EU regulations, are you seriously
    suggesting that a bucket airline could fly into Paris with a balsa-wood plane, powered by rubber bands? Of course not. Air safety is well regulated. And could be applied to internal EU flights in exactly the same way. But Brussels blocks it, for nasty protectionist reasons, nothing to do with safety.

  12. It is probably more important to note the poor outlook for aircraft and component manufacture in the UK post Brexit. I cannot see Airbus putting up with sitting in the EU`s worst location for ever.
    That’s what they say anyway , it hadn`t actually occur dolt there would be any problem with air routes .

    Oh well I`m sure our new friend America will allow us to compete on equal terms …as if !

  13. The most important thing to remember about every single one of these scare stories is that they’d be equally as true even if 65, 75, 85, 95% of us had voted to leave.

    They’re being reported on by Euromaniac publications such as the FT to show Leave voters how wicked and stupid they are. What they actually show, however, is that those who have ruled us since Maastricht have assumed, in defiance of history and opinion polls, that we would always want to be part of the EU, no matter what it turned into.

  14. You`ve lost me there Charlie , you seem to have confused “scare story” with “stone cold fact”

  15. I imagine anyone who outlines even quite basic conceots loses you Newmania.

    The point is that too many of the connections that bind countries together have been made on the assumption that we’d always be members of the EU.

    I am not disputing that it will be hard to remedy this – in fact the difficulty makes me think that we should get on with it now, rather than in twenty years.

    The logical extent of the FT’s argument, and yours, is that the difficulties involved in leaving are so great that we shouldn’t attempt it, not because we don’t want to, but because it is too hard. Our permanent political reluctance over Europe should be jettisoned in the face of temporary difficulties.

    What needs to be understood is that any obstacles involved are of our own making. We have not voted for anything unreasonable in wanting to make our own laws again.

    If a chartered ship’s captain steered his vessel down a narrow strait towards a destination the owners explicitly didn’t want to travel to, whose fault would it really be that turning round was difficult? The FT, a parti pris rag, thinks the answer is the owners.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *