UK aviation calls for bigger role in economic growth planning amid Brexit pain

Key stakeholders in the UK’s air transport industry have lamented the impact of Brexit as they urged the government to put the sector at the centre of growth plans for the wider economy. Speaking during the Airlines 2022 event in London on 21 November, speakers representing airlines and airports expressed particular concern about the effects of the UK’s departure from the European Union on future economic growth prospects. “There’s no doubt that Brexit has damaged the UK economy, 99% of leading economists would tell you that,” says Manchester Airports Group CE Charlie Cornish. “You just need to look at the UK’s rate of growth now [versus its EU counterparts].” Highlighting an example of that damage, Cornish cites the huge number of EU citizens who have left the UK since the Brexit vote, saying this restricts the aviation sector’s ability to recruit “at scale and at pace”. Describing similar challenges from the airline industry’s viewpoint, IATA director general Willie Walsh says he has not heard “a single politician express or articulate clearly an economic Brexit benefit”. The UK’s aviation minister, Charlotte Vere – known as Baroness Vere of Norbiton – had earlier told the conference that a Brexit benefit was the UK’s ability to proceed with airspace modernisation in a “different” way to the EU’s approach. Walsh does not consider that a meaningful benefit of Brexit, however, and suggests that UK airlines are fundamentally disadvantaged by no longer being able to “cooperate freely within that larger [EU] market”. That view is echoed by FedEx Express’s senior vice-president of air network and global trade services for Europe, Jorn Van de Plas, who says Brexit has made UK operations “more complicated” and has “brought our service down” because goods are “stuck at the clearance point”. <br/>