Murdo Morrison: March 2012 Archives

The absence of a specific licensing requirement for the command of a multi-crew commercial aircraft is one of those things the aviation world has always taken for granted. An air transport pilot licence with a type rating allows the pilot to fly a multi-crew aircraft either as commander or co-pilot.

Conventional wisdom suggests commanding a crew requires the exercise of expertise and qualities a co-pilot would not necessarily have, so why does this loophole in the licensing system still exist?

Most good airlines provide their co-pilots with some kind of command preparation before promoting them. But even the good carriers usually consider pilots for command when their position on the seniority ladder puts them next in line for the left-hand seat, so this is scarcely a meritocracy.

At a time when the whole pilot licensing system is at the threshold of major change, it is right that this anomaly should be examined. The International Civil Aviation Organisation is already leading the change from subjective pilot performance assessment before awarding a licence to providing comprehensive descriptions of required competencies, so it looks even more odd that there is no description of the competencies required of an aircraft commander. Fortunately, ICAO and the European Aviation Safety Agency are preparing to change all that.

(This first appeared as the second leading article in Flight International 27 March)

The absence of a specific licensing requirement for the command of a multi-crew commercial aircraft is one of those things the aviation world has always taken for granted. An air transport pilot licence with a type rating allows the pilot to fly a multi-crew aircraft either as commander or co-pilot.

Conventional wisdom suggests commanding a crew requires the exercise of expertise and qualities a co-pilot would not necessarily have, so why does this loophole in the licensing system still exist?

Most good airlines provide their co-pilots with some kind of command preparation before promoting them. But even the good carriers usually consider pilots for command when their position on the seniority ladder puts them next in line for the left-hand seat, so this is scarcely a meritocracy.

At a time when the whole pilot licensing system is at the threshold of major change, it is right that this anomaly should be examined. The International Civil Aviation Organisation is already leading the change from subjective pilot performance assessment before awarding a licence to providing comprehensive descriptions of required competencies, so it looks even more odd that there is no description of the competencies required of an aircraft commander. Fortunately, ICAO and the European Aviation Safety Agency are preparing to change all that.

(This first appeared as the second leading article in Flight International 27 March)

Build it, and they will come. It is a philosophy which might work for baseball fields and schmaltzy Hollywood movies, but one that has not, so far, been borne out by the airliner manufacturing sector. If mere assembly served as the demarcation between commercial success and aeronautical ignominy, the Dassault Mercure might have been remembered as something other than a costly lesson in prognostication gone bad.

Those who, in 2002, attended the roll-out of the ill-fated Fairchild Dornier 728Jet - a twinjet built but never flown - will testify that illustrations of aircraft components on production lines are highly unlikely to be enough to convince investors that a programme is fundamentally sound.

So, while pictures of the Bombardier CSeries cockpit structure serve as evidence that - at some point - a real aircraft will emerge, the order backlog for the type is understandably still a source of concern. The Canadian airframer has not yet managed to clinch the elusive blue-chip commitments which would give the CSeries critical mass, and justify its manufacturer's faith and heavy investment.

There is no shortage of opportunity. Airbus predicts a need for 3,380 aircraft in the 125-seat sector over the next 20 years, and an all-new, tailored airframe holds obvious appeal. But the Catch-22 of the air transport industry is that nothing attracts orders like a healthy backlog. All-new spells risk - even if the potential pay-off is substantial - and confidence is a tough prize to capture at a time when few customers have the stomach to gamble - not least since Airbus and Boeing are pushing alternatives featuring many of the powerplant benefits, as well as a clear upgrade path.

Allying its product with the Comac C919 might allow Bombardier to offer the Chinese market a hybrid family, and thus enable the CSeries to piggyback its way to a few orders from the nation's carriers, at least while the C919 stays un-shrunk.

But Bombardier isn't building the CSeries to relegate itself to the status of an also-ran in the Chinese market. Which is why the airframer needs to ensure that China does not become a distraction, as the CSeries nears the flight-testing phase in which the aircraft can start to prove itself with hard data.

Build it, and they might not come. But fly it, and the odds are much better.

(This first appeared as the lead Comment article in Flight International 27 March)

Protests against the European Union's decision to unilaterally apply its Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) to the global aviation industry are understandable, but so too is the bloc's refusal to suspend the directive.

Nations, airlines and associations opposed to the EU ETS champion instead a global system for regulating the industry's carbon emissions, developed through the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). But the EU is right to be sceptical; ICAO has so far had 15 years in which to produce results, to no avail.

The EU's stubbornness and resulting threats of retaliatory action, while worrying for European airlines, have at least spurred on ICAO's efforts. Its chief executive has vowed to have a proposal on the table by the end of this year. For the EU to back down now would risk losing that long-awaited momentum.

In the meantime, however, it is increasingly difficult to dismiss threats of reprisal as an attempt to call the EU's bluff. China's ambassador to the EU was quick to quash rumours that the country has blocked its airlines from purchasing Airbus aircraft because of the EU ETS, yet Beijing has already issued a directive banning the country's airlines from complying with the scheme. Russia and the US have similar legislation in the pipeline.

Nine of Europe's aviation big guns have written to their governments appealing for further consultation. While the industry awaits ICAO's offerings, the EU should consider that showing a degree of flexibility - while sticking to the principle of the EU ETS - may be the only way to avert a trade war.

(This article first appeared as the second leader in Flight International 20 March)

South America's economic revitalisation has yet to translate into a rebirth of the continent's largely dormant aerospace industry outside of Brazil, but there are promising signs.

In the 1980s, it was possible to wonder which country - Argentina or Brazil - had the aerospace industry with the brightest outlook. Brazil's Embraer certainly seemed to have the lead, with active production of Bandeirante and Brasilia regional turboprops and a basic military trainer called the Tucano. But this was before Embraer's spectacular 1990s growth spurt fuelled by regional jet sales, and Argentina seemed just as poised - having produced the respected Pucara attack aircraft and Pampas jet trainer - for a similar lift-off.

Argentina, however, regressed as Embraer surged forward. By the end of the 1990s, the government had transferred management of the state aerospace industry to Lockheed Martin. The new Argentine aerospace company - FAdeA - is back under the management authority of the state. Argentina must be careful to avoid a repeat of history, but FAdeA appears to be blossoming, with several active upgrade projects. FAdeA is also developing the IA-73, a primary trainer and successor to the EMB-112 Tucano.

Other South American countries have also started to foster aerospace clusters. Many of them, including Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, have recently designed their own unmanned air vehicles.

The Embraer KC-390 programme can become a continent-wide catalyst for industrial growth. Brazil has signed letters of intent with the industries of Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru to participate in the programme. Already, Embraer is helping Colombia's aerospace industry to complete upgrades for the air force's fleet of Tucano trainers.

It will still take many years and a new level of sustained commitment before most South American countries become reliable industrial partners.

The state-owned industries must learn to overcome the ebbs and flows of aerospace programmes. A critical test may come in Chile. The local aerospace company ENAER is relatively advanced, but has fallen on lean times. For many years, ENAER's fortunes were tied to Embraer's ERJ-145 programme as a structures supplier, now that 50-seat jet has seen sales vanish. ENAER may still play a key role in the KC-390 and IA-73 programmes, but it is likely to need strong state support - and patience - to survive.

(This article first appeared as the main leader in Flight International 20 March) 

Like most companies, EADS strives to be exceptional. Unlike most companies, it also expends a great deal of energy in pursuit of normality.

This apparent contradiction is rooted in the creation of EADS, with the welding together of medium-sized national aerospace champions in a bid to keep Europe alive in an industry dominated by US giants. The result has been exceptional - as chief executive Louis Gallois said last week, EADS competes "eye-to-eye" with the titans across the Atlantic - but, self-evidently, the parent company of Airbus and Eurocopter has been a political project since before its birth a decade ago.

Today it is publicly traded, it pays dividends and it no longer has a politically dictated dual-management structure that pairs every German with a Frenchman. But with almost half its shares owned or controlled by the governments of France and Germany, EADS is far from being a normal company.

The issue matters, as EADS operates in a competitive and rapidly changing world and may suffer if management is hamstrung by political interference.

Still, Gallois makes a valid point when he says it is natural for governments to push for jobs and investment in their countries.

In that respect, EADS is as normal as, say, arch rival Boeing. Washington DC does not own that company, but surely has the ear of management.

(This first appeared as our second leading article in 13 March Flight International)

The ATC Global Exhibition in Amsterdam lives up to its name in terms of the geographical spread of the companies which exhibit. But the associated conference was focused almost entirely on two regional air traffic management modernisation projects: the Single European Sky and the USA's NextGen.

This will come as no surprise to anyone in the industry because these two massive projects - on the verge of a painful delivery after a decade in gestation - will influence how the whole world will organise ATM for at least a generation.

Not that the European SESAR Joint Undertaking and the US Federal Aviation Administration are actually the first into the field with anything amazing in its own right. China is investing in airport and ATM infrastructure at a phenomenal rate, but with the advantage of starting from a low baseline with a clean sheet, they have been able to leapfrog traditional technology and go straight to system-wide satellite-based en-route guidance and required navigation performance approaches. India has followed a similar approach for much of its territory. Australia has had continent-wide ADS-B surveillance for several years, but mounted to cover non-intensive airspace and - in its outback at least - is starting with a clean sheet.

Meanwhile, Europe and the USA have no clean sheet and have to transition seamlessly to better ways of managing intensively used airspace dotted with multiple frantic terminal areas serving highly developed mature economic systems which utterly depend on air transport connections. That is the kind of project you cannot afford to get wrong, and its scale is well beyond anything that has been attempted before in the history of aviation.

That said, is it really going to happen? Most of the world's airspace, including that of Europe and the USA, are still controlled by traditional means.

While the views of a wide range of experts and industry people at the conference varied, the majority say the targets for new-age ATM by 2020 - subject to funding and political will - could definitely be achieved. However, that proviso is critical. Political will is driven by imperatives, and a contraction of air traffic since the 2008 financial crash has unfortunately made the situation seem less urgent. The risk now is that plans that are crucial in the long run will be deprioritised in the short term. If that continues, when the time finally comes for the new system, it will already look dated.

(This article first appeared as the main leading article in 13 March Flight International)