The global banking sector's complacency, and the world's connivance in it, led to a crisis of confidence that is affecting all businesses, including the airlines.
The banks were living in a fool's paradise and the world was enjoying it with them, until the cheap credit mirage did what mirages do.
Airlines are, in many respects, also living in a fool's paradise, and the world has been enjoying that, too. But while the banks' ability to kid themselves and the public was largely down to inadequate government oversight of corporate practices, the international airlines' artificial world is propped up by state interference in the form of bilateral aviation agreements and restrictive ownership rules.
Even if many bilaterals have been liberalised, they still exist, and together with ownership restrictions and - in many cases - government subsidy, they create an artificially protected world where mediocrity can flourish in good times and survive the bad, and in which creative business thinking and risk-taking entrepreneurialism is stifled.
But, as if the credit crunch, fuel prices, environmental taxes and governmental straitjackets were not enough to kill the airlines, they are crawling toward a future in which one critical resource does not exist because they have failed to recognise that times have changed in other ways as well.
Expert people, like pilots and engineers, who used to arrive free of charge from the military, are not arriving any more, but the airlines have miserably failed to provide a workable, sustainable alternative source.
The ultimate cartoon cliche depicting mirages is the dehydrated wreck of a man crawling over the sand toward a shimmering oasis. In this case the palm trees represent the recovery of the global economy when, boosted by the surging growth of the world's middle class, the surviving carriers will enjoy a new golden age. Unfortunately, when they make it to the shining pool of water, they will notice it no longer exists.
The day after Flight International's Crew Management Conference in Dubai ended, having revealed how desperately short of pilots and maintenance engineers the aviation world will soon be, the International Civil Aviation Organisation pasted up its flyer for "Tomorrow's aviation - a world of opportunity for skilled aviation personnel".
It is a pity no-one told the airlines, most of which are doing the square root of zero to attract and train them. Wake up today or die of thirst tomorrow.
Source: Flight International
