| One-sided report on aviation and the economy published | 
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In the story published on the Web in Oct 99 - Rigged economic study on aviation - we revealed how a study, which had been ostensibly commissioned by the Government to help it formulate a national airports policy, was in fact commissioned and paid for by the aviation industry. We showed how the Terms of Reference had been contrived so that only economic benefits would be demonstrated, while all the costs and disbenefits were ignored. Also, that environmental costs, even those which could be quantified in economic terms, were deliberately excluded from the study. See the story so far for more about this study and our concerns about it.
A high profile media launch was held on 10 Nov at the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) offices. Amazingly, the invitation came not from the Government, but from Lord Marshall, the chairman of BA, illustrating how the show is being run by big business. The launch was to have included Lord McDonald, the new Minister for Transport, as speaker but he devolved the task to the new minister responsible for aviation, Chris Mullin. Other speakers included Adair Turner, the Director General of the CBI and Lord Marshall, chairman of British Airways (BA).
The launch was met with a big yawn by the press and there was little coverage in the papers. We spoke to a couple of journalists who said that it was not that the issue was not important, but they just saw it as a 'set- up job'. Clearly they were not fooled any more than us !
It was evident from the speeches that the criticisms of the study by Friends of the Earth (FoE), the Aviation Environment Federation (AEF), and the local authorities special interest group on air transport (SASIG) had been noted. While the bias implicit in the sponsorship of the study and the Terms of Reference had not been addressed, all the speakers took pains to emphasise that this study was only part of the story and that environmental issues were very significant.
As expected, the report from Oxford Economic Forecasting (OEF) did as much as it could to 'hype up' the economic benefits of air transport. Bold headings like aviation is vital to the UK's growth sector and aviation is an engine of international trade are not the type of comment one would expect in a sober and objective report by independent economists. They are rather the sort of assertions one would expect from the air transport industry's Public Relations departments !
More worrying than the hype is what is missing from the study. The subsidies to a sector and the real costs it imposes on society are of great significance if one wishes ascertain the real economic impact. Yet these subisidies and costs were studiously ignored. Calculations were made of the cost to the economy if growth in air transport were to be constrained. But this calculation was based on a blatently invalid assumption about the response of users to such constraints.
Hidden away in the report, there are some antidotes to all the pro-aviation hype. In fact aviation does not create jobs . The report says .. little change in overall employment since most of the jobs lost [if air transport is not allowed to grow as fast as it could], are over time, replaced by other jobs elsewhere in the economy ... This is exactly the point FoE has been making to counter the ludicrous claims of the industry and its supporters about how the industry creates jobs. The report also mentions that air transport has a balance of payments deficit - as does the tourist industry which it does so much to promote.
Links to related pages
Background to the report
Myths about jobs and the economy
An independant report
(Story published 15/11/99)