Recently in Aero-politics Category

The US Air Transport Association (ATA) has fired its first shot across the Obama administration's bows as it continues its fight to prevent emissions trading, or other market-based tools, in the USA. ATA president and CEO James C May has written this for the National Journal's transportation expert blog.

The next day he was followed by his equivalent at the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), Marion Blakey, on a related tack. Not a coincidence, I think it can be assumed.

The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), the highly influential body that represents US manufacturers, has created an environment page on its website. It's called, not unreasonably I suppose, "Aviation and the Environment".

It has a page of FAQs, one of which reads as follows:

Why have I heard more about this issue in the last couple of years?
In some areas, aviation has been targeted by environmental advocates. These individuals have been vocal in their criticism from time to time and made some headlines. While well intentioned, their argument stems from a lack of information of aviation's history of environmental performance and plans for even more advances in the future.

So that's told them!

I'm not personally sure that it's the intellectual way forward though.

A few speakers rely heavily on their data slides which I'll try to update when they're released over the next week or so. One of those is Nikolas Hill, a senior consultant with AEA, but he is also the one speaker to speculate - in response to a question - about where the UK Conservatives got their figures. Notably the one that says high-speed rail is 70X cleaner than air travel.

One of the day's most interesting speakers is not actually on the agenda, but Michel Leboeuf of the Systra consultancy arm of French rail operator SNCF gets plenty of attention when he speaks from the floor.

Michael Hayes, managing consultant for Atkins Transport Planning, puts out the question: "Is Heathrow important to the business case for high-speed rail?" And he continues: "If you are going to build this very expensive piece of kit, which markets do you want to serve?"

He points out the complexities of trying to serve the markets for Birmingham and also for Liverpool further north, and he suggests that only Scottish traffic would experience a "significant" shift from air to rail. It might lead, he suggests, to a solution with better conventional long-distance rail services with "occasional" high-speed trains on the longer routes.

"This comes across as saying there is not case for high-speed rail," he frets. "I think there is a case, but it has got to be part of a bigger solution."

Prof Robert Cochrane of Imperial College London, who was heavily involved in the the landmark Eddington study of UK transportation, also bemoans the inadequate data - particularly on non-aviation travel, and especially the roads.

Next up is Stuart Condie, BAA planning services director and the man whose show it is.

I'm just back from a small but perfectly formed conference in London organised by BAA and designed to help them, and anyone else, understand how Heathrow and the national rail system should be linked - or not. With particular emphasis on the case for high-speed rail. BAA plans to come out with its own proposals in summer 2009.

All of a sudden this has become a big deal after the UK opposition Conservative party announced, to the astonishment of just about everyone, that they would not go ahead with building the third Heathrow runway and would instead invest in high-speed rail. Their leader David Cameron personally put his name to this idea. As the Conservatives have at least an evens chance of being the next government, this is not a trivial matter.

At the conference, where there are something like 100 attendees from business, academia, consultancies etc, there is general bafflement at what the Conservatives are doing and where they sourced their supporting data.

It's kicked off by chairman Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics. Drily noting that Heathrow is "a national treasure" - a very British, and decidedly two-edged description - he says: "High speed rail could make Heathrow easier to access and greener but, and there is a paradox here, easier to expand."

At one point it looked as if the war was won over the proposed third Heathrow runway. The UK Labour government was onside and supporters were cautiously confident. But one way or another the whole debate is up for grabs again - particularly since the Conservatives took everyone by surprise and said they won't support it if they get in. So today BAA, through the Future Heathrow grouping, turned up the pressure with the backing of 100 entities of various sorts, but overwhelmingly from the business community, and in large part from the financially muscular end of the sector.

At time of writing it has to be said that this Monday press release wasn't actually getting a lot of traction - but the names are actually pretty impressive and will certainly give the Conservatives food for thought.

Daniel Elwell of the US FAA was before the US Congress yesterday to update legislators on progress on cutting emissions. He talked up air traffic management advances, which I think is absolutely right, but rather spoiled the effect with some frankly flaky stuff about how US airlines had cut emissions more than EU carriers. Here is his testimony.

I realise he has to play to his audience, but this really doesn't help advance aviation's cause. No doubt US airlines will cut their emissions a whole lot more than EU carriers in future too - hard not to when you've still got a goodly number of DC-9s rattling around!

Elwell, by the way, is assistant administrator, office of aviation policy, planning and environment. And he was addressing the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's aviation sub-committee. Other parts of the hearing were blogged by Evan Sparks, whose blog I've only just discovered.