The Crunch in BRIC Air Travel: Is The Economist Obsessed?

Has anyone noticed that the The Economist can't stop writing about the woes of air congestion and bad infrastructure in the BRIC countries? Must be all those new correspondents hired out of j-schools to go cover the industrial explosion that's going on there.

In Brazil, from the December 2006 Economist Sao Paulo Briefing:

Cancelled flights and long delays have plagued Brazil’s airports for the second successive month. Technical glitches were to blame for December's problems, though, rather than the work-to-rule by air-traffic controllers that caused November’s chaos. On December 2nd radio frequencies started disappearing from the air-traffic-control systems, disrupting communications between pilots and controllers. December 5th saw such widespread failure and so many cancelled flights in Brasilia, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte—the country’s busiest air triangle—that the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) called it the worst day in Brazil’s commercial aviation history. Federal police found no evidence of sabotage.

The air force, which manages the system, blamed a maintenance error. Opposition politicians duly called for the resignation of Waldir Pires, the defence secretary, who oversees the air force, and two congressional committees will investigate the problems. Possible solutions include demilitarising commercial aviation control and decentralising air-traffic control from the over stretched Brasilia hub.

From China, similar report in the December 2006 Economist Shanghai Briefing:

Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport, one of the country's busiest, shut down mysteriously for several hours on December 1st. With no warning and little explanation from authorities, both domestic and international flights were rerouted, postponed or cancelled. Some incoming flights had to turn around; others were stuck in holding patterns 100 miles outside Shanghai airspace.

China's media managed to neglect the story, but early foreign reports suggested the move was “to control air-traffic volume”. Other reports blamed “military exercises” and a “biochemical weapons drill” in preparation for the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing—but pilots were baffled that they were not notified in advance. Access Asia, a Shanghai-based business-intelligence firm, claimed the shutdown was part of a long-running battle between China's air force and the airport authority over the use of airspace. The air force wants the authority to pay for access, and has evidently “stepped up the squeeze”. The event has done little for the airport's efforts to become a trusted business-travel hub.

For Russia, a long piece about the general depressing state of Russia's old Communist-era airports. Here's the first bit:

Working as a journalist in Russia, with its eleven time zones, its endless steppe and perpetual taiga, means spending a lot of time in the air. It involves flying in planes so creaky that landing in one piece is a pleasant surprise —then disembarking in airports so inhospitable that some visitors may want to take off again immediately.... full story

There was a piece a few months ago about India's crumbling infrastructure:

Domestic air travel in India is growing by about 25% a year, and five new carriers have entered the market in the past three years. It is perhaps not surprising that the airports cannot cope. At Delhi's, the second-busiest after Mumbai's, incoming flights often have to circle for 30 minutes or more in a queue to land. As in Mumbai, the air-traffic control system is operating at more than twice its design load.

Comments

Or maybe it's that the Economist is read by business travellers, so it's important they know and of interest to them to know whether they're likely to be delayed.