A lesson learnt by ANSPs through the recent bank bailouts
To a different degree, most of us have, are being, or will be affected by the financial crisis. Some directly, unfortunately, through loss of money or job, others indirectly by worrying about what the future will bring. So it is quite legitimate, I think, to dedicate a post on this crisis.
I could have written on how ANSPs and States should still invest in aviation and air traffic management during a trough in activity [called, I think, a counter-cyclic investment] which would better prepare us for the future and help the industry to react to the difficulties rather than getting it into a downward spiral. But I won’t.
What I would like to talk about is what ANSPs could learn from the bank bail-outs offered by the states to save the financial system from utterly collapsing.
I am writing at a stage when banks which went bankrupt have been saved [even if we start hearing that the same banks having been bailed out are still fragile and might need more help in the near future] and those responsible for this mess have not been punished yet. If this remains to be the case, then if I were CEO or were sitting on the directors’ board of a corporative or privatised ANSP, I would then start thinking in the following manner:
Let us start taking more risks with our service provision so that we maximise our profits. Let us get rid, or under invest, or ignore the areas which do not generate enough profit [such as for example local / small airfields or lower airspace which generates lower revenues], let us not invest in new technology which will maintain and improve the levels of safety; let us do more with less, let us squeeze what we have. If we fail our State will bail our company out; it will have to because the service we give is of capital importance to the masses, to the economy and finally to the running of the state itself. As heads of the ANSP will get away with it [like the bank chiefs did] and by that time we would have bloated our pockets with profit [which otherwise is not so easy to get in an industry such as ANS provision.]
The recent bailouts without serious consequences to those who caused them [at least yet] carry a very serious risk of eroding a level of responsibility that corporative and privatised companies have when they are giving key services to the population and to the state. Already, one can convincingly argue that key services should remain in the public services’ realm. Now if we add bailouts and impunity of privatised ventures in this domain, I think we will be heading for serious troubles in the future…<–>
