Aviation International News senior correspondent Ian Goold has been involved in aerospace since 1964 and in aviation media for more than 40 years. He enjoyed a 20-year career at Flight International magazine, where he was latterly air-transport editor before turning freelance in 1993. A winner of the European Regions Airline Association Hank McGonagle award for excellence in aerospace journalism and a Royal Aeronautical Society Aerospace Journalist of the Year global&nbsp;award, he has edited or contributed to aerospace and aviation magazines, special publications, and websites in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. Ian entered aerospace as an apprentice at the British Aircraft Corporation at Brooklands (Weybridge), where he worked on production and final assembly lines of the Vickers Super VC10, and BAC One-Eleven , and manufacture of Concorde major sub-assemblies. He subsequently graduated from the BAC Design Training School to work in the airframe structures drawing office (including design of international future projects, such as the Panavia Tornado multi-role combat aircraft) before joining Flight International in 1973. Apart from years of reading aircraft magazines and books, his first direct contact with aviation media had come during the early 1970s when he was involved at Brooklands with the Weybridge Man-powered Aircraft Group, which designed and built the tenth aircraft to fly under purely human power. As an aviation journalist, he has worked at more than&nbsp; 50 of the major biennial&nbsp;global and regional international aerospace industry shows at Le Bourget, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai (having missed attending only one "Farnborough" since 1960), plus innumerable NBAA, HAI, (U.S.) AOPA, and EBACE Conventions and ERA Assemblies. His favourite aircraft is the Hawker Hunter, of which – as a schoolboy – he heard hundreds make their first flights from Dunsfold, where also on September 24, 2013, he saw the penultimate landing of the VC10 (happily involving an example of which he had witnessed the maiden takeoff in 1970) a day before the last example made the design's final flight (unless, of course....).

Senior correspondent

Ian Goold

European Regions Airline Association members face three “front-line” issues as they prepare for their annual general assembly in Manchester, England, this month: the environment, the so-called Single European Sky (SES) and safety regulation. Director-general Mike Ambrose concedes that the industry’s concerns haven’t changed much over the past year, but the scrutiny on these topics has become “more intense” since the last general assembly.
The inclusion of aviation in the “Mother Directive” legislation covering the emissions trading scheme (ETS) for other industries is “all but agreed” and awaits only the European Commission’s rubber stamp, Ambrose told AIN last month. “I think it is inescapable that Europeans have to abide by the ETS, even though Brazil, China, the U.S. and even Russia do not expect to accept emissions-trading applied to their operations,” he said. 
Ambrose shows characteristic concern about what might happen to surplus revenues arising from the auctioning of carbon permits. “Governments are unaccountable for the money, and if the proposal is adopted there are going to be casualties,” said Ambrose. “The [airline] associations must see to it that European aviation is not shot in the foot.” 
He said that long-haul flights such as Chicago-Delhi or New York-Bangkok likely would not fly “over” Frankfurt, London or Paris because ETS charges apply to flights to, from and within Europe. Rather, operators will opt to use airports in the Middle East, with Europe “handing traffic to [Gulf states] on a plate. We’ll lose the connecting traffic and the money that is always spent at transit stops.” 
Ambrose has told ERA members and industry partners that “the European Parliament and Council are compelling Europe’s air travelers to ‘sign a blank check’ in what will probably be the biggest legislated cost imposition in air transport history. [They] have agreed to a compromise solution that will ensure that aviation joins the ETS in 2012. Associated legislation allows states to retain surplus revenues that [it says] should be used for funding competitive and, allegedly, more environmentally friendly transport, helping the developing world and funding environmental research in aviation. 
“[But] there is no compulsion on states to adhere to this recommendation [and] no requirement for [them] to produce annual transparent reports explaining in detail how this revenue has been deployed. Revenue from permit auctioning, if used for purposes other than air transport, is basically a tax. Increasing the percentage of permits to be auctioned would grant uncontrolled access to substantial additional revenue from an industry that already bears higher tax levels than its competitors,” said Ambrose.
Turning to the second package of SES legislation unveiled earlier this year, the ERA official welcomed the prospect of performance targets and separation of regulation from service provision. However, he was hoping for more.
According to Ambrose, what is missing is “unbundling of services. Some air- navigation services providers [ANSPs] are charging for non-ANSP services.” He cited charges for meteorological information. “It is quite reasonable that airlines use ‘met’ [service], but that should be a free choice of where they buy: it should not be a built-in check [for ANSPs].”
Finally, Ambrose addressed the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), whose competence has been extended to include flight operations and crew licensing and has generated a new rulemaking process for implementation in four years. He is worried about job creation, as well as job duplication–with some tasks in danger of being performed at the European as well as state level.
“My objective is to have a roadmap for EASA that will not enlarge its scope of responsibilities,” said Ambrose. “We need clarity about the role and responsibilities of EASA compared with the national aviation authorities [NAAs].” He compared the establishment of EASA with that of other institutions such as Eurocontrol, fearing a repetition of what he perceived as problems that should have been addressed during their formation. 
Ambrose sees the planned Single European Sky as a belated attempt to “clean up” Eurocontrol, which famously still involves more than 30 service providers within the region. “Everyone guards his own turf, instead of asking what is needed to make Europe’s skies safe,” he said. “There’s no compulsion to look at the best way to do things. Why allow every NAA to invent its own [method]?” With NAAs continuing alongside the fledgling EASA, job numbers grow “just as we always expected, but we want to see NAA employee numbers drop like crazy.” 
Asked if he is optimistic about the future, Ambrose commented, as if going through a lengthy mental pre-flight checklist: “When [Edmund] Hillary climbed Mount Everest [for the first time, in 1953], it was one step at a time. We keep pressing, in order to move forward.”

ERA 2008: ‘Front line’ issues turn more intense

European Regions Airline Association members face three “front-line” issues as they prepare for their annual general assembly in Manchester, England, this 

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