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Editorial Flybe’s failure shows that transport is of strategic public interest

BRITISH AIRWAYS boss Willie Walsh has flown into an highly confected outrage at the government’s decision to throw a temporary lifeline to his rival Flybe. 

“This is a blatant misuse of public funds,” he complained.

It seems Flybe shareholders are to put up some additional capital while the government will defer a tax bill.

The actual mechanics of the deal are designed to defer the possible consequences of a bumpy landing by the ailing domestic carrier while the government fixes the details of a deal with the European Commission that keeps our country as closely aligned with the EU’s single market as is compatible with the continued stability of Boris Johnson’s Commons majority.

Talk of a move to abandon passenger duty on all internal flights would function as a guarantee that the state aid to this particular airline would also apply to all other domestic flyers and thus fly under the radar of EU regulators, who are ever on the watch to police the permitted boundaries of public assistance for failing firms.

This whole episode is but a skirmish in the developing competition between two large airline corporations. 

British Airways’ transatlantic and long-haul rival Virgin is but one component of a group of capital and transport acquisitions that includes Flybe along with the Stobart Group.

Virgin Atlantic is majority owned by the second-largest US airline, Delta, which operates a vast network of domestic, Latin American and global routes from its Atlanta hub while BA is part of the IAG group, which includes Spain’s national carrier. 

Thus if any innocent observer is inclined to conclude that this, or any other the multimillionaire boss of a multinational corporation, might be motivated by pure political principle in opposing state aid, they should have a word with themselves.

All transport is constantly subject to mergers and acquisitions as the recurrent crises of capitalist demand — and the drive to extract even higher profits forces the least profitable to fail.

In this case there are structural issues that go to the anarchic character of capitalist development that has seen the concentration of London’s global air traffic and its separation from domestic and European flights and thus rendered Heathrow less competitive as a continental hub.

Set this against rising concerns about aircraft emissions and climate change and the expectations raised by the Tories’ election pledge to pay attention to regional development, and we have a pot pourri of problems for the government.

The labour movement’s interest in this issue centres substantially on the need to protect jobs and services in Flybe’s dispersed regional network.

Beyond these vital trade-union issues, the political question of how Britain’s transport needs are to be met in the remaining half of this century concerns everyone.

Will the resolution of these questions continue to be plaything of the market with profits put before people and planet or can we force this government to act in our collective and communal interest?

The movement needs to pay attention to the growing monopolisation taking place and the extent to which life-changing decisions for thousands of workers and the collective transport needs of our country are in the hands of profiteers.

Our airports need to be publicly owned and internal air transport priorities need to be considered along with improving the rail and road network to serve social needs.

Proper planning of an integrated transport network is impossible without strategic public ownership of the major assets and without a rigorous regulation.

The very scale of these economic, social and environmental problems and impossibility of resolving them within capitalism make an unanswerable case for socialism.

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