Korea and Japan expand air services opportunities

In a 10 June 2009 post the Airline Route Update weblog reports that Japan and Korea have again expanded the opportunities available under their air services arrangements (see previous post).

This would seem to again point to a willingness on the part of Japan to open up Osaka and Nagoya to fifth freedom services by foreign carriers as part of a new policy approach (see previous post).

Thanks to a link from Airline Route Update I have discovered where to find the official press statements NEW from the Japanese aeronautical authorities at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism NEW on the outcomes of their air services negotiations. Unfortunately they are only available in Japanese but a rough translation NEW is possible using Google Translate NEW. I will endeavour to update my previous posts that used secondary sources.

Five hundred posts on this weblog

This post is the 500th I have made on this weblog since my first post on 26 November 2006.

I deliberately decided at the outset to use my own name rather than a nom de plume. It has meant that I have been somewhat guarded in any comments that I have made, trying to appear to be the neutral public servant that my day job requires.

The weblog has probably been more focussed on subjects related to my work on international air services than I originally intended, but I hope that it has provided a useful set of pointers to sources on the web for aeropolitical matters. It is a fairly arcane subject so I have not been expected a mass readership, but I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of visitors I have had from around the world. Some posts attract much more attention than others, usually not because of what I have to say but the quality of the work of others that I have linked to.

Also, I have not tried to post every day as some of the more dedicated bloggers do, so sometimes it may take a few weeks for "news" to appear on this site, and I make no claims that the coverage is comprehensive. Some of the weblogs listed down the right-hand side of my weblog do a much better job of that than I do and I am a regular reader of many of them.

At the beginning of this month I placed a Flag Counter widget in the right-hand column that will give an further indication of the many countries visitors to this site come from. This is in addition to the Feedjit map and listing.

I have continued to try to keep my home pages up to date with over a thousand web links, many related to my work, and have been trying out Twitter, Facebook and Flickr (click for my material) for more personal material.

Turkey and Japan agree to expand air services opportunities

In a 10 June 2009 post the Airline Route Update weblog reports that Japan and Turkey have expanded the opportunities available under their air services arrangements.

Expanded air services arrangements between Japan and Italy

In a 19 June 2009 post the Airline Route Update weblog from Canada reports that Japan and Italy have expanded the opportunities available under their air services arrangements.

ICAO Group on International Aviation and Climate Change Final Report released

After four meetings held in 2008 and 2009, the 24-page Final Report (.pdf) of the International Civil Aviation Organization's Group on International Aviation and Climate Change (GIACC) dated 1 June 2009 has been released (see previous post).

The GIACC Report sets out a 21-point Programme of Action which was adopted by consensus. The Report, however, makes clear that there were a number of points on which no consensus was reached.

The report will now be considered by an ICAO High-Level Meeting to be held later in 2009.

Report from CANSO highlights air traffic management inefficiencies

The Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO) web site, which has be revamped, contains an important new report ATM Global Environment Efficiency Goals for 2050 (.pdf) completed in December 2008.

The report highlights the inefficiency of air traffic management (ATM) in Europe. A key finding is that the European air traffic control system is estimated to be 89-93% efficient compared with the Australian system at 98-99%. Reducing this inefficiency has an important role to play in reducing aircraft emissions.

"Efficiency" of 100% in this context is defined as aircraft being able to take the shortest (great circle) route between A and B at the most appropriate altitude and speed for fuel efficiency, and not be delayed. The report says that safety, weather and noise considerations mean that 100% efficiency is virtually impossible to achieve.

The global ATM efficiency is estimated to be 92-94%. It is good to have some hard facts that show the number used by UK official sources, whilst about correct for flights within Europe, is not appropriate in a global context (see previous post).

The CANSO report also features what is being done to improve ATM performance with SESAR in Europe, NextGen in the United States, and ASPIRE (see previous post) in the Asia-Pacific region.

Air New Zealand and Air Canada concerned about Middle East airlines

On 9 June 2009 the Nation carried a report of an exchange between the Chairman of ACE Aviation Holdings, Robert Milton , the Chief Executive of Air New Zealand, Rob Fyfe, and the Chief Executive of Etihad, John Hogan, at a panel discussion at the IATA 2009 AGM in Kuala Lumpur.

European 2009 election results map

On 8 June 2009 the Guardian published an interactive map of European 2009 election results.

Profiles of New Zealand's international visitor markets released

In June 2009 the New Zealand Ministry of Tourism released 4-page market profiles of nine of New Zealand's key inbound international visitor markets together with an overall profile.

Eight of these key markets provide 77% of New Zealand's visitors, while 69% of all visitors arrive at Auckland International Airport (AKL).

The profiles also highlight the seasonality of the travel patterns and, with the exception of the Australian market, the significance of dual destination travel (visitors stopping in another country enroute to or from New Zealand).

Australia reviewing air carriers' liability regime

As part of the Australian Government's Aviation Green Paper released on 2 December 2008, the Minister for Infrastructure announced a comprehensive review of Australia’s air carriers’ liability and insurance arrangements.

A discussion paper has been released with 30 preliminary findings. The deadline for public submissions is 26 June 2009.

"Towards a Low Carbon Travel & Tourism Sector" from the World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum with the support of Booz & Company has produced a 36-page report, Towards a Low Carbon Travel & Tourism Sector. The report was released by the UN World Tourism Organization at the beginning of June 2009.

"Aviation: The Real World Wide Web" from Oxford Economics

A June 2009 120-page report from Oxford Economics (the summary includes the contents page of the full report) looks at the social and economic impact of aviation, including on international trade and tourism (HT to Plane Talking). This follows a shorter report on the same subject that Oxford Economics prepared for ATAG and published last year (see previous post).

As well as regional summaries, the full report includes a number of case studies from around the world about the impact of aviation.

The report was funded by Airbus, British Airways and easyJet.

Life-cycle research suggests aviation may cause less environmental impact than rail

Environmental life-cycle research done by Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath from the University of California, Berkeley questions the assumptions being made about the climate-change impact of the various passenger transport modes. The research includes the climate change impact of construction of the necessary infrastructure and vehicle manufacture (HTs to SciTechDaily and Transport Gooru).

The researchers have established a web site http://www.sustainable-transportation.com/ NEW that has links to the 8-page results summary of the research published on 8 June 2009 in Environmental Research Letters and some of the media coverage their work has received.

There are parallels in this research to that being done on so-called "food miles" (see previous post).

Will the Bishop of London now change his attitude to rail versus air transport (see previous post)? Perhaps not given that the 9 June 2009 BBC coverage of the research failed to include the conclusions on heavy rail!

Boeing 2009 Current Market Outlook published

Just in time for the Paris Air Show this week, Boeing has published the 2009 edition of its Current Market Outlook. The interactive web-based version gives full details of the aircraft manufacturer's forecasts.

An 11 June 2009 posting on the Boeing weblog Randy's Journal has a short summary.

Aviation Deal Group membership growing

On 5 June 2009 Australian-based Virgin Blue became the latest airline to join the Aviation Global Deal (AGD) Group. The AGD so far includes The Climate Group, BAA and the following other airlines: Air France-KLM, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Qatar Airways and Virgin Atlantic (see previous post).

The AGD has issued a revised 9 June 2009 version of its 17-page proposal directed at ICAO and the UNFCCC on how to address aviation and climate change.

Aviation causing 4.9% of man's climate change impact?

Among the papers presented at ICAO's fourth GIACC meeting held in Montreal on 25-27 May 2009 was one by the International Coalition for Sustainable Aviation (co-ordinated by the European Federation for Transport and Environment). At the back of this information paper is an abstract of a scientific journal article currently in press, Aviation and Global Climate Change in the 21st Century by Lee, Fahey, Forster, Newton, Wit, Lim, Owen and Sausen.

The abstract of the new scientific paper suggests that in 2005 the figure for aviation was around 3.5% of total anthropogenic forcing or, if aviation-induced cirrus cloud formation is taken into account, around 4.9% but there is not a high degree of confidence in the latter number.

The formation of cirrus cloud by aviation activity is more common in parts of the northern hemisphere where the bulk of aviation activity occurs.

Note that the abstract states that in the period 2000-2005 total air traffic increased by 22.5% while total aviation fuel use went up by 8.4%. The total increase in aviation-induced radiative forcing over the same period was estimated to be 14%, excluding the cirrus cloud formation.

To date one of the most widely quoted sources on aviation's impact has been the IPCC's 1999 Report Aviation and the Global Atmosphere.