ERA Regional Airline Conference 2018: Securing the future

By April 19, 2018 January 16th, 2020 General News

Ongoing threats to Europe’s commercial aviation industry including rising fuel costs, Brexit, and the skills shortage have been highlighted by panellists at a gathering of the sector’s key players.

Discussing these challenges at the annual Regional Airline Conference in Vienna, organised by the European Regions Airline Association (ERA), Christine Ourmieres-Widener, CEO of Flybe, highlighted “the usual suspects” of fuel costs, foreign currency exchange becoming less predictable, Brexit, and industry consolidation. She also flagged up the impact that the evolution of competition has on the industry, and the challenge of the industry-wide skills shortage.

Cyber security was also agreed as being one of the greatest threats facing the regional aviation sector. According to Warner Rootliep, managing director for KLM Cityhopper, “There’s a desire to become more connected with the aircraft – you want to read more data from the aircraft, ideally you want to do it almost in-air so you can work on your predictive maintenance more – and at the same time that opens up threats for making sure the environment is protected from predators.”

Ourmieres-Widener suggested that working with so many suppliers, ground handlers, Air Traffic Control and airports – and the flows of information between them – creates a complex infrastructure that is tough to solve, adding: “That’s a complexity that is putting us at risk more than any other industry.”

 

Potential opportunities

Mikael Wångdahl, VP external production at SAS, predicted that co-operation could be an opportunity for regional carriers to investigate the possibility of a different business philosophy: acting as a capacity provider. The challenge of this is that it’s not developed, but he suggested the growth could be “substantial”.

For regional carriers, the routes which can be flown with aircraft of 80 or fewer seats, and which would prove unsustainable for bigger airlines, should be a focus, said Christine Ourmieres-Widener: “There is a market because connecting communities and regions should definitely be something that is a top priority for airlines.”

In response to a question on the possible opportunities presented by Brexit, several panellists suggested that while there may be some, the lack of clarity and current threats overshadow those potential future opportunities. “It’s difficult to think about the opportunities when you don’t know if tomorrow you can keep your operation, if you can keep employment,” Ourmieres-Widener went on to say. Adding that while additional complexity could come with opportunities, it also “decreases opportunities to move from one market to another, to add a route, to have an open competition.”

 

Skills shortage across the board

Discussing the skills shortage, Andy Green, CEO at Jota Aviation, said that while the pilot shortage was well known, there was also a need to raise the issue of the gap in engineering skills. He pointed out that with the high average age of licensed engineers (in their fifties) due to retire, it will leave an experience gap.

“It’s a big fall off a cliff to people in their thirties and forties, and there’s just not that expertise there,” Green said, adding: “I think it could become more of a problem than the pilot shortage. It’s just not on the horizon yet.”

Delegates also heard from András Farkas, training and operations director from PharmaFlight, who discussed potential solutions to the shortage in view of the pilot retirement age, and also from Miguel Vaz Pinto, technical co-ordinator director at TAP Express (operated by Portugália Airlines), who shared insights into the impact of the shortage on the airline, and how it is recruiting and adapting its promotion structure for the future.

Similarly, in his presentation ‘Attracting the next generation into the business’, Paul Conway, group managing director at Qualitair, also recognised the shortage of engineers as becoming a key industry issue, suggesting there will be massive demand in the future for maintenance personnel if the trend continues, “and there aren’t enough mechanics.”

While graduates end their degrees with licences making them certified engineers, he said, there aren’t enough skilled mechanics and structural engineers in the aircraft maintenance division because the kind of training facilitating this has stopped. The “huge void” between the ages in the industry could become a major problem if a solution isn’t found, as it could affect availability of maintenance personnel and capacity, said Conway, who suggested this could lead to a “survival of the richest” situation as prices consequently rise.