Pilot Group Decries Deregulation Proposal Circulating in ICAO

[Updated on July 20 to include comments from ICAO and IFALPA]

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has drawn sharp criticism from the European Cockpit Association (ECA) over a proposal by some members states to force what the pilots’ group characterizes as full and unfettered global airline deregulation. The proposal, now under development by two working groups calls for the ratification of a multilateral convention to fully liberalize market access for international air transport and change the rules governing ownership and control (O&C) of airlines. According to the ECA, “obscured interests” have sought to quietly rush the process under which such proposals typically undergo.

“This is...full scale, instant, worldwide liberalization that would change the aviation industry overnight,” ECA president Dirk Polloczek said in a statement. “The fact that you don’t hear many voices against this agreement is not because there is a consensus, but because there is a deliberate and partisan effort to keep this deal off the radar. We find both the process of drafting this agreement as well as its content, nothing less than scandalous.”

In an interview with AIN, Polloczek criticized the working groups—one dedicated to the development of international agreements on the liberalization of market access and air carrier ownership and control and the other to “competition matters”—for what he characterized as a lack of transparency in their deliberations. “It’s not the complete Air Transport Regulation Panel (ATRP) that is participating in those two working groups,” he said. “It’s basically limited to some countries, and the whole process and proceedings are very intransparent...we’re not really sure what’s going on there.”

ICAO vehemently denied the existence of any conspiracy to squelch the viewpoints of labor concerns, noting that the UN body invited the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the International Transport Worker’s Federation to serve as observers at a May 2014 ATRP meeting. “Each organization provided responsible and substantive inputs, including concerns at that time which were duly noted in the meeting report,” said ICAO in a written statement to AIN. “These opinions, and any subsequent inputs these agencies provide, will inform all subsequent deliberations through the ATRP, the Air Transport Committee it reports to, and ultimately to ICAO’s member states at our 39th assembly [in autumn 2016].

At a June 8 to 11 meeting in Dubai, ICAO Working Group 1 (WG1) examined draft texts associated with the basic agreement and side protocols on passenger traffic, cargo traffic and ownership and control. Working Group 1 consists of Singapore, the U.S., the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jamaica, Switzerland, Germany, France, New Zealand and Australia, which chaired the meeting and drafted the group’s paper for consideration. The ECA’s umbrella organization, the International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations (IFALPA) acts as an observer. Meanwhile, Jamaica chairs Working Group 2, which also consists of the U.S., the UAE, Canada and the UK.

The paper drafted by Working Group 1 was presented in March 2015, but Polloczek complainted that it did nothing to address labor, social, environmental or fair competition issues. “These topics cannot be separated or left to be dealt with at a later stage,” he said. “A text on liberalization cannot be accepted until all issues are properly addressed and solved.”

Working Group 2, meanwhile, has yet to produce any papers. Polloczek claimed that during it's meeting, the UAE and the U.S. dominated the debate over that panel’s remit of fair competition. “Both have different motivations to do so,” he noted. “The U.S., of course, wants to defend their Chapter 11 regulation and their own industry, and the UAE urgently needs to open up worldwide traffic rights for its expanding fleets.”

Neveretheless, added Polloczek, he suspects the three main international airlines from the Persian Gulf—Qatar Airways, Emirates Airline and Etihad Airways—have acted as instigators in the way the policy formulation process has been conducted. “I think the last meeting took place in Dubai on purpose,” he said, adding that, originally, ICAO canceled the meeting due to concerns from European countries over the lack of “safeguards” in Working Group 1’s draft and that fact that both working groups hadn’t completed their papers. “A week later it popped up again on the agenda...Until a week before the meeting we didn’t even know where to go. So they managed to get this meeting back on the agenda, and I think it’s very obvious what kind of interests drives the agenda here.”

ICAO suggested that Polleczek’s statements betray a lack of undertstanding about the process and structure to which such deliberations must adhere. “Mr. Polleczek...seems unfortunately unfamiliar with the very common sense need for ICAO panels, working groups and other consultative expert bodies to be comprised of subsets of states featuring balanced geographical representation and concerned international organizations,” it said. “He also seems not cognizant of the fact that the working groups he was participating on through IFALPA are explicitly informal in nature, and therefore hardly capable of instigating “full scale, instant, worldwide liberalization that would change the aviation industry overnight.”

ICAO also “encouraged” the ECA to vet further viewpoints through the International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Association (IFALPA), which, it said, “is much more familiar with how international consensus is arrived at through ICAO.

In fact, when asked by AIN for comment, IFALPA president Martin Chalk expressed a more measured viewpoint than did Polleczek. “The work of the ATRP is at an early stage and as anyone who follows any international air transport negotiations will know--they take time,” he said. “The EU-USA negotiations took the best part of a decade, numerous rounds of consultations, two failed agreements and two successful agreements to achieve their current status...Consequently, there is nothing yet to comment upon.”

ICAO’s schedules call for the next Air Transport Regulation Panel meeting to take place from September 1 to 4 in Montreal, where all the countries in the panel will get a chance to participate. Although once the paper makes its way to next year’s ICAO general assembly for ratification, only those countries that ratify would participate in the agreement, the ECA fears a “snowball effect” in which those countries could pressure non-participants by withholding foreign investment.

The ECA has lobbied representatives from several European countries to call for an impact assessment, which, said Polleczek, some countries have recently started. “So many of the European countries are now sharing our concerns and saying ‘we need to have a different approach to this,’” he concluded.