There was a burning question begging to be asked recently. It was an obvious, but highly sensitive one that the assembled journalists were clearly itching to ask the Lufthansa Cargo boss at his recent briefing in Frankfurt. What was the situation with Moscow’s suspension andthen temporary resumption of Lufthansa’s overflight rights?
The answer, in no way a surprise, succinctly summed up the situation. The issue had become a high level political one, and a tense one at that, explained Andreas Otto and hence there was no need to further escalate the tensions by commenting further.
The incident – detailed in the article “Russia plays hard-ball with Lufthansa Cargo,” (pg. 53) – highlights a number of issues, most notably how vulnerable the air industry is to global, regional and domestic political whims and how quickly international conventions can be handily swept under the rug.
Never mind that Russia has been playing fast and loose with international air agreements for sometime, as can be seen by the nearly 300 million European airlines are forced to pay Moscow each year for overflight, a practice widely regarded as illegal under international air conventions. Fees levied for overflight rights can only be applied to flight safety and must not exceed those expenses, say legal experts.
According to the Financial Times Deutschland, part of the fees collected go to Aeroflot, whose head of the board of directors is a former colleague of Putin in foreign intelligence and a high-ranking member of the Kremlin today. But from a contemporary context, what is perhaps more shocking is just how fast things can slide from fast forward into reverse. It’s beyond dispute that the world has made more headway at advancing the concept of open-skies in the last handful of years than ever before.
Denying overflight is so antipodean to this concept that it’s practically stone-age. It could be worse I suppose – at least no aircraft were shot down this time, something Russia doesn’t exactly have a sterling record on. The incident also highlights another new reality, that of a re-emergent Russia.
Many commentators suggest the actions by Russian president Vladmir Putin’s government simply reflect the new reality of this newly oil-flushed nation driven by a nascent strongman, dubbed by CNN as Tsar-Putin. The suggestion is that Putin is eager to see Russia recapture some of the lost global power and influence the former-Soviet Union used to wield with impunity. Certainly Russia has shown its inclination to use strong arm tactics with some of its neighbours over energy, including the Ukraine and Belarus.
The fact that Russia applied the ban only to cargo flights and not the vastly greater number of much higher profile passenger flights, could be taken as a sign that the Kremlin still has some modicum of regard for global public opinion and international relations. So what was behind this draconian exercise? One theory is that Russia is trying to establish a bargaining chip ahead of discussions with the EU over passenger air services agreements in the coming months.
Whatever the case, by end-February we will see what the next card is up Russia’s sleeve, and in the meantime Lufthansa Cargo will have to sit tight and keep its fingers crossed.
After all, it has no real alternative other than to fly through Russian airspace as its business in Asia is far too important to reduce flights and fuel prices are far too high to make alternative routes viable. Both points are surely not lost on the Kremlin. – Donald Urquhart