I tried but I failed. When asked is there, for aviation, an upside to Brexit? I didn’t come up with anything that would justify the action. That’s me. Someone who is used to the ideas of cost-benefit analysis and the rational thinking that usually backs it up. Regulatory impact assessments used to be insisted upon by politicians wary of difficult rule changes. Let’s face it, over decades we have chosen to do things, or not do things based on consultation, rational discourse and detailed analysis. Those evaluations where always scrutinised to the nth degree.
Now, here we are doing something big that has no, or extremely little benefit and a huge almost unfathomable cost. If Brexit were documented in a notice of proposed amendment,[1][2] then it would get a horrible slating. It would end up in the waste-bin within a short space of time.
These are my views. If I’m true to the labels that I just put on myself then I’ll ask if others have a different interpretation. This is where the flying pig comes in. The expression “pigs might fly” goes way back in time. For hundreds of years it has been used as a response to overly optimistic prediction made by naïve people. It’s to say: that’s impossible in a jokey way but ever mindful that in a parallel universe such antics maybe commonplace.
That said, history is on my side. Back in 1909, the pioneer aviator Baron Brabazon of Tara, known to his friends as John Theodore Cuthbert Moore Brabazon, took a piglet aloft in his private biplane strapped into a wastepaper basket in a move to prove that pigs can take flight.
Perhaps somewhere pigs do fly now. In a sense they do, as livestock in cargo aircraft designed to move them from A to B. Generally, however intelligent they maybe as beasts, they haven’t figured out aeronautics just yet.
The question is: please describe a significant benefit that Brexit provides to civil aviation for the passenger or for the industry or the environment?
To win the Flying Pig Award the answer must be practical, realistic and based in fact.
Minor changes that benefit just a few privileged people will not cut it. It’s the hundreds of millions of typical passengers that I have in mind. It’s the industry that employs hundreds of thousands and it’s the local, regional and global environment.
I think my shiny silver pig money box is quite safe.
Sorry for passing over the two most notable upsides, namely: Blue passports and a Brexit 50p coin.
[1] https://www.easa.europa.eu/document-library/notices-of-proposed-amendment
[2] https://www.transportation.gov/regulations/rulemaking-process
John Vincent 