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 director-general Mike Ambrose struck an extraordinarily positive tone during a recent interview with AIN as the recession-driven downturn in traffic appears to be easing slightly. He cites airline demand that has led manufacturers into development of new aircraft and engines, such as the Bombardier C Series and Pratt &amp; Whitney PW1500 geared turbofan, as well as further variants of established designs such as the ATR 42/72 series. 
“There is a future [and] we are investing in it,” Ambrose said ahead of this month’s ERA general assembly. “The industry has never stopped believing in itself.” European regional airline traffic and capacity figures for this year’s first half, scheduled for release at the meeting, appear likely to show a continued easing in the travel downturn. Meanwhile, as has become his custom, Ambrose has called for regulators to avoid proposing “unnecessary” legislation as the industry works hard to balance its available capacity. 
In April, Ambrose described the “full horror of the [economic] situation,” moderated only by the industry’s tendency to see doom always followed by boom. But he expressed encouragement by ERA airlines’ “can do” attitude and their determination to succeed, supported by their “tremendous energy.” Members had seen almost no growth in passenger numbers last year and struggled to match capacity to reduced traffic, apparently with some success according to the ERA’s early 2009 statistics. 
While passenger numbers remained lower than initial 2008 trends, the relative year-on-year decline had reduced, Ambrose said, “The fall in [January and February] was less than in November and December,” he noted. “And February fell less than [did] January.” Still, he added a caveat: “I’m not saying that the market has bottomed out.”
Indeed it has not. Statistics for January to June 2009–to be released as part of this year’s director-general’s report–appear likely to show that European regionals have only slowly come to terms with the air-travel downturn. (Published ERA statistics cover reported business from almost 40 of its member airlines, subject to subsequent correction as additional information becomes available.)
If trends continue, AIN analysis of figures for the first five months of 2009 suggest that by the end of June cuts in capacity as measured by available seat miles (ASMs) didn’t keep pace with the fall in revenue passenger miles (RPMs). The fact that in March airlines increased capacity almost 5 percent, while traffic fell nearly 4 percent, according to ERA, certainly exacerbated the trend.
With the exception of an increased downturn in February, however, passenger numbers during the first five months slowly moved back toward last year’s values, due to improving customer confidence, deep discounting of fares, or perhaps both. Year-to-date statistics show a declining drop in passengers, from a fall of around 12 percent in January to less than 10 percent in May, with cuts in capacity generally about four percentage points below the value required to balance demand. 
As airlines continue to weather the storm, Ambrose wants to see “a more sensible approach to regulation” by Europe’s rule makers. “There has been a failure of regulators to recognize the desperate state of the industry,” he said. “To work our way out of our problems, we need stability and certainty.” He added that airlines need access to bank funding because, having managed falling demand, many do not benefit from sufficient cash flow to support an extended period of low revenue.
Accordingly, regional carriers need “an avoidance of unnecessary legislation and constrained airport charges and [airspace] navigation fees.” He said that in one example, a proposed regulation had generated 13,000 comments from industry.
While fearing that air-transport problems do not even appear “on the [regulators’] radar screen,” the official did note one area of apparent bureaucratic comprehension. “It is hard to reconcile European Commission priorities with industry needs, but we must congratulate them for forcing through [with industry support] the Single European Sky [SES II] legislation,” said Ambrose, who concluded that SES II would enhance improvements in air-traffic management across the region and accelerate the provision of airspace capacity in a more efficient way. &nbsp;

European regionals weather the economic storm

European Regions Airline Association director-general Mike Ambrose struck an extraordinarily positive tone during a recent interview with AIN as the recess

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