The Fanblade

It is rather embarrassing when Gordon Brown lies to the United States, traditionally the UK’s closest ally and friend, about the release of the Lockerbie bomber. The spin culture that started in 1997 with New Labour, Blair and his spin-doctor Alastair Campbell has ballooned rather than abating with Brown taking over. The UK has a culture of lies and deceit for personal gain, whether political or financial. You see it the way lawyers really behave (if the truth was known, which it rarely is); you see it in the way tradesmen rip people off, tell them their boilers or cars are worse than they are. Regulations and laws are codes which are there to be adhered to and if the general attitude of citizens is not to be law abiding, all will be lost. Because the enforcement mechanisms in society are only meant to deal with a certain amount, the theory being that the rest are deterred by the punishment of the few. Lawyers work against that, and should be brought into line with the codes and rules they pretend to observe; the same goes for bankers, and will go for bankers if they are further regulated, as looks likely. The mantra of lawyers is ‘it’s all about the evidence’, which means false evidence is OK by them, as long as it is convincing enough to trump any real evidence – such as memories, circumstantial evidence and even written records – which if they are discovered late may not beat the false evidence. Thus lawyer seek to cover evidence up, and do not disclose it despite an obligation to do so – and they have developed an armoury of ‘wording tricks’ that will enable them to wriggle out of anything if found out. And if at the same time the courts are being influenced by propaganda, which is not disclosed to the other side, this further tips the balance – one that could well be in their favour already via the Old Boys Network. It is interesting to note that many politicians are lawyers. They do get caught out but lots gets through the net. Journalists that go the extra mile and push and push are a rare thing nowadays – the skills to persevere are on the wane as publishers fail to invest in good news gathering. The result is that Britain has turned into a society of people who care only about themselves, with little notion of shame when they lie or cheat. With lawyers, it would not be surprising to find out that the secrets of litigation in common law courts is regarded by senior lawyers as a set of tools worthy of protection, rather than exposure – perhaps through collusion among the senior ranks. After all, if they came clear a multi-billion pound business would suddenly be one-tenth the size. If I can do my bit to make that happen, then so be it. I just need Parliament to listen, and an MP to sponsor a private members bill – the Litigation Reform Bill 2010.

If you are thinking of putting England as the jurisdiction for your contract think again. It’s reputation for fair trials is not deserved, as it has poor policing of the much-heralded Civil Procedure Rules and lawyers are secretly doing each other, and thier families, friends and contacts, favours. It really is Who you Know that counts.

Read this to see how corruption rules the legal world…

MargaretsLie

The last flying Avro Vulcan at RIAT Fairford 2009

I am at present acting as managing editor of Regional International, the journal of the European Regions Airline Association (ERA), so have little time to post to the Fanblade blog let along keep up with the defence side of aerospace. However I did go to Fairford yesterday (Saturday), the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT) which thankfully was not rained off despite heavy downpours on Friday. Last year it was cancelled due to rain and I suspect this affected attendance a little, along with the recession, although it became very full around 3-4pm. The Avro Vulcan was the star of the show as it was at Farnborough last year, while the 100th anniversary of Naval aviation fly-past was impressive. Tickets were not cheap at £40 a head (with, commendably, U16s free) although as media I side-stepped that – however media facilities were very thin on the ground and we had complimentary tickets for the Saturday (or Sunday) rather than a press pass. It may be designed to stop media exploiting the system and actually going for a family day out, but you couldn’t help feeling that the profile of the event will suffer for it. They need to be seen to be putting on the world’s biggest military air show. It is in the middle of nowhere so making an effort to get media coverage is a real job with real benefits. In addition, the Friday used to be a press day where the media would get a chance to speak with industry and air force leaders, but that was not the case this year. An opportunity lost? There were some big banner adverts with BAE Systems having te greatest presence, as you would expect, but the US military command kept its head down despite a good turnout of aircraft (from B-1 to B-52). Some notable absences among European military ranks were reportedly due to cost-cutting (e.g. French). Then there was the odd inexplicable banner, e.g. from NATS (the UK’s air traffic control organisaton). How many of the crowd would actually have notices the NATS banner and among those few people how many would actually know what NATS was? My conclusion: It was RIAT but not as we know it… a little subduued but strangely busy later in the day. One good thing – the usual multi-hour traffic queues were not so bad, I hear (I took the precaution of staying near the airfield overnight!)

The star of the show was the Superjet 100 because it was making its big show debut

The Paris Air Show, where I was working for Aviation International News on the show dailies (see www.ainonline.com), was surprisingly upbeat despite a lack of big stories. It was also very busy on Tuesday and Wednesday, after a very wet Monday. We were there working from the Friday before the show, including the weekend, from early til late as the Monday issue is always very full and plenty of companies send their latest snippets. The best story was Qatar Airways’ boss Akbar Al Baker’s berating of Boeing for its handling of the Boeing 787 – which we thought may make its maiden flight towards the end of the show (but in Seattle of course). It will probably fly next week, but first deliveries are now some two years behind the original schedule. It doesn’t seem long since I helped write a book on the project, visiting Seattle along with manufacturing sites in Charlston, Italy and Japan using a rickety, Dutch-rolling old 727 corporate jet that Boeing hired. That was 2006, and now is 2009, and Boeing’s delays have given Airbus real hope for its A350. The show saw Boeing’s Scott Carson revealing in a packed press conference in the auditorium that it is looking seriously at a re-winged 777. It has clearly realised that the 787 is too small to capture all the market the A350 can. Bombardier was quick off the marks at the show giving an upbeat market forecast (for after the recession, which it said was manageable (far more so than 2001) because of the big backlogs the industry has built up); and also an update on the CSeries – which is looking increasingly impressive to fill the “neglected” 100-149 seat segment. Embraer was very quiet although at the journalist awards I sat on their table, with Air & Cosmos journalist turned press man Herve Tilloy hosting. The company has been in a tussle with the government over cutting jobs but we didn’t discuss that, too political! Instead we discussed Serbian aviation with a Serbian aviation magazine founder who also sat at Embraer’s table. I asked whether Serbia had a low-cost carrier and (having had a few glasses of wine) one was duly invented by our Serb friend to fill the apparent vacuum – ‘No one Airways’ (better written as No 1 Airways) was given a tall lady journalist CEO. No prizes for guessing it was Mary Kirby (aka Flight’s ‘Runway Girl’), also on Embraer’s table. However we discovered that Serbs can only fly to Iraq, Cuba and Montenegro without a visa, so popular are they! After numerous gongs were handed out it was announced that Geoffrey Thomas was Aerospace Journalist of the Year. Good one Geoff (who was also with us on the Boeing 787 trip in ‘06). On the military side the A400M was the latest target for AIN’s Chris Pocock, who also had half an eye to proving that the UAE had ordered Dassault Rafales from France. In the end little happened other than a greater awareness that the A400M was really an almighty cock-up of a project. If the UK pulls out, as looks possible, it could cause a chain reaction although Louis Gallois, EADS CEO, said France, Spain and Germany would carry on. Yet he was more interested in going to watch France beat the All Blacks at rugby than staying to watch Saturday’s EADS press day! Great achievement though it was, things are looking tough for EADS as it wonders how it can really afford the A350, A400M and A380 when customers are clamouring to delay aircraft and struggling to get finance for them. 2010 is going to be a real crunch time. I’ll sign off with a mention of GE, who with CFM and France’s Snecma handled the show in the most subtle yet professional manner of all – from the GEnx unveiling to spinning a range of Etihad engine orders into the ‘biggest ever’ – to CFM’s fun but not at all ostentatious shindig in the Tuileries Gardens glass house – topped by an unfussy but effective press release to sum up the show as it had been for GE/Snecma/CFM. CFM really sets the standard for international aerospace joint ventures, and GE gets the gong for Aerospace Company of the Year (Note to Ian Bustin at Rolls-Royce: You can have it at Farnbrough 2010 – but only if England wins the World Cup!)

Look out for the next issue of the highly successful Arabian Aerospace magazine, which will include a focus on Kuwait  following FB’s visit this month. Runway lengthening and strengthening work starts soon – at present A380s can only use KIA as an alternate – and a third runway is planned west of 33L. Kuwait Airways is meanwhile hoping that its longed-awaited fleet renewal programme can get underway. An Amiri decree dictates that the airline must be privatised first so that a strategic partner can be secured. After liberalisation in 2005 Kuwait has seen low-cost carrier Jazeera Airways and now premium travel Wataniya Airways start up, eating into the monopoly KAC once enjoyed.

Ronaldsway Airport, the Isle of Man’s main airport (situated at Castletown), is upgrading its runway to comply with ICAO’s RESA (Runway End Safety Area) requirements and is also having a new control tower constructed. FB was there for a week of R&R, but recently wrote an article for AIN’s EBACE Convention News (for the annual bizjet show in Geneva) on the Island’s very successful aircraft register, which is now two years old. Brian Johnson, Director of Civil Aviation, hopes thatit will become the register of choice for private aircraft.

The new control tower at Ronaldsway is going up fast

Boeing Capital’s cerebral md Kostya Zolotusky has been addressing the aircraft finance community in New York, London, Hong Kong and Dubai, trying to persuade them that it’s not all gloom and doom. In London’s Canary Wharf (Four Seasons Hotel) last week he met reporters for a round-table discussion while the bankers enjoyed a buffet lunch, and outlined Boeing’s take on the challenges ahead. Boeing believes that “the volatility of oil will be staggering” going forward, and it sees a long term price range of $60-90 a barrel, sometimes spiking outside that. That is providing a solid incentive to develop alternative fuels – starting with ‘drop-in’ Camelina-derived fuel, moving later to Jatropha and then, when the technology matures in a few dacades time, algae-based fuels. This will smooth out volatility, reduce net Carbon and reduce US reliance on imported oil. With vast areas of the US lying fallow every 3-4 years, Boeing sees this as a great opportunity to scale up production of Camelina grass. “We’re talking to airlines and also to the ports, as when you do Jet A the first 50-60 percent is biodiesel,” says Zolutusky. While the environment is top of the agenda now, however, Boeing’s core concern is its orderbook and to that end it is saying that the current economic climate is “manageable.” Zolutusky sees banks in China taking a greater role in a more global aircraft finance market, and says that Boeing and US Exim Bank have created a new structured finance product to help airlines acquire new aircraft. He points to the current popularity of and demand for US Treasury financial products as the risk/return now looks very attractive – so there is a “long line of banks waiting to do US Exim deals.” On the London audience he said they were “more dour and pessimistic than New York, which surprised me” but on reflection he saw the reason – the US market has been one step removed, often taking an underwriting role, whereas the London financiers were directly involved. “This group has been the market makers for 15 years… they can see what they are losing… the liquid markets weren’t great as they offered thin margins” – and now, the margins are potentially great but the parent companies won’t back the deals. Zolutusky also said he believed the 777 and 787 were a combination that was “working phenomenally well”, referring to Airbus’s A340 as the “canary in the coal mine.” “All A340s will have to leave the world’s market before a single 777 is grounded,” he added – because the A340 is four-engined, and would not be an efficient freighter either. And of the A350, he said that the best Airbus could hope for was that the Aircraft would be almost as good as the 787 and that Boeing had been confident in going first in that market that there was no breakthrough technology that would allow Airbus to “leapfrog” the 787. He believes that ultimately the 787 will scale up very well as a possible 777 replacement and that this could “overwhelm the A350.” [Airbus is welcome to reply to all this - Ed.]

Lockheed Martin’s media quiz held last night at the Hard Rock Cafe in London’s Piccadilly was an excellent get together and a great way to end a busy year of reporting. Forgiven LM is for the occasional question on LM – some more obscure than others. But the company has certainly pulled off some product-placement coups in Holywood of late (even if the F-22’s future is less than certain, it looks the part even without CGI enhanced capabilities!)

What a turning point the Summer of 2008 has been for the aerospace sector, and in particular the airline industry. High fuel prices have wreaked havoc with airline cash-flow and reserves, and a booming industry has suddenly found itself in a downward spiral again as the credit crunch pushes the US and Europe into recession. At July’s Farnborough air show everyone was putting on a brave face, talking the talk while hoping they’d come back from summer breaks and everything would be OK again. For this Blogger a very busy time has left no time for blogging but even aerospace journalists are struggling to find work now, such are the pressures on advertising budgets of the publishers. Seven years since 9/11 the world is no more certain in its direction, although luckily it seems that a U.S. economic downturn does not mean the same for the rest of the world – with China and India, and the Middle East, in booms all of their own.

In 2004 I had a motorcycle crash and my helmet helped save my life, along with my rucksack which saved me from severe back injury (judging by the burn marks!) A car pulled out in front of me without warning, and while the bike was crushed under a car coming the other way, that same car missed my head by inches. So I was interested to see a Safety Alert from the NTSB showing how motorcycle deaths in the USA had more than doubled in the ten years to 2006, to some 4,810 in that year. It is sobering to think that number is more than the American lives lost in Iraq over the past five years, which last week sadly surpassed the 4,000 mark. But while in the UK helmet-wearing is compulsory, it is not the case in the USA where three states have no helmet law at all, and only half of states make helmets compulsory. It may be the land of the free but with freedom comes responsibility – responsibility which, in the UK, also includes helping to keep costs to the National Health Service down.