Open skies, closed minds

On 30 March the European Union’s ‘open skies’ agreement with the USA comes into force, permitting any European-based airline to fly to any city within the USA, and vice versa.

Proponents of open skies claim the move will add between US$8.6 billion (£4.3 billion) and US$16.5 billion (£8.2 billion) to the world economy, generate an additional 72,000 jobs, and drive down prices: Michael O’Leary, boss of Ryannair, says he plans to offer a return to New York for under £10. What is more, open skies will present an opportunity for airlines to pool resources.

Of course there will be benefits – why else would such a plan be put in place? The question is: do the benefits outweigh the disadvantages? I would suggest ‘no’ – in fact ‘no way’.

Boom to bust?

The new deal will result in an extra c.25 million passengers travelling between Europe and the US over the next five years. Assuming that the average plane accommodates 300 passengers, that’s 80,000 additional flights shoehorned into a system already at bursting point. This will mean the need for bigger airports resulting in bigger traffic jams around them, more and bigger aircraft, more road building – indeed more of just about everything.

Yet even prior to this announcement, the USA was anticipating air traffic growth amounting to 300 million passengers – the combined population of America and Canada – over the next 10 years. As Greg Principato, president of the North American branch of Airports Council International, remarked as early as 2006, “the real question is how do we physically accommodate these new numbers and keep the system working effectively?”

Since 1997, only six runways have been added at large hub airports in the US. Open skies will undoubtedly place the US infrastructure under greater strain. In the UK, things are no different: according to the Strategic Aviation Special Interest Group, in the absence of a natural catastrophe every five years the UK will run out of runways within 15 years, inclusive of all existing plans. This statement was also made prior to the open skies announcement.

Domestic dangers

Concern is rising that the prospect of carriers moving into transatlantic markets will lead to cuts in domestic services. Nigel Turner, chief financial officer of BMI, refuses to guarantee the continuation of existing domestic routes. As Graham Stringer, MP for Manchester Blackley observes, “If you liberalise, because slots have greater value, you are likely to damage domestic routes because you can make much more money flying to San Francisco than Aberdeen.”

Then of course there is the small matter of pollution. A 747 burns at least 50 tonnes of kerosene per transatlantic flight, equating to four million extra tonnes of expensive – and finite – fuel over the net five years. That in turns equates to 12m extra tonnes of CO2 emitted over this period, coincidentally the same amount that is to be reduced as a result of including aviation in the European emissions trading system. The Open Skies agreement risks nullifying all the EU’s efforts to tackle climate change.

What we need is fewer aircraft, not more; fewer complaints and delays; less congestion and, most urgently, a reduction in pollution. The outlook is simple: either maintain international aviation growth at its present rate or have a stable global climate. With the future seen merely as a far off land, it seems economic growth wins the day, as ever, over stability.

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